Interview With a 2-Year-Old

What is your name?
"Pee-er" (Peter)

How old are you?
"TWO!"

What are your favorite things to do?
Park, Play, Cycles, Choo-choo, Cars, get naked and put my diaper in the trash

What do you like to eat? What do you dislike eating?
I like "berries, corn (on the cob), turkey, melon, (hot) dogs, muffins, (avo)Cado, noodles".
I don't like getting sick from foods I'm allergic to: milk, soy and nuts.

Do you like to cook?
"Corn!" Popcorn anyways, mommy gets out the air popper and lets me watch the kernals pop!

Do you have any pets?
"Dog-hie, Kitty, and fish."

What is your favorite color? Why?
"Blue!" It's the only one I really know and is the color of the sky!

What do you think you will do when you grow up?
I will make lots of "buddies" and make people smile.

Do you have any chores?
I can put things in the trash, I put my diapers there alot. And I help with the laundry, I play basketball with clothes to fill the washing machine. Sometimes though I'll throw other things in there like cars or food, mommy doesn't like that so she usually double checks my work.

What does your family celebrate? How do they celebrate?
My family will find any reason to celebrate. Sometimes its a big multi-day celebration like Xmas or birthdays. Other times its just a special snack and stickers.

Do you have things to do every day that you don’t like doing? What are they?
Taking naps, going to the store with mom and waiting for her, staying inside when its raining

What are your favorite animals?
Dogs are everywhere and they are fun to pet! Kitties are cool when they meow. I try to make our kitty meow but he only does when you hurt him and mommy doesn't want me to hurt him. At the zoo I like the turtles, the ducks, and the giraffe. I like to say the word "baboon", but I don't really like them.

What is your favorite thing to wear? Why?
Any of my choo-choo shirts or car shirts. They are cool! Also anything with "pah-kets (pockets). And if mom would let me I would wear a "suit" aka swimsuit every day.

What would be the best thing someone could give you?
Anything with cars or trains or a bus or plane...things that GO

What are your favorite books?
Little/Big
HUG
Hands Hands Fingers Thumb
Stop Train Stop
Baby Faces
Elmo Loves You
I Love You Stinky Face
How Does a Dinosaur Clean Up His Room
Counting Kisses

Which sports do you like?
Baseball, I went to spring training games and recently learned how to catch a ball in a glove. I need to get a t-ball set this summer. I also like basketball and love to make baskets when I put my toys away. I LOVE swimming though. At the pool last week I got in a swim ring and swam by myself from one side of the pool to the other!

Do you live in a house or an apartment?
An apartment. I like it because there are a lot of people and dogs to say hi to. We have a basketball court where I can ride my "cycle" and chase my dog. We also have a pool to swim in when it is hot out. And mommy taught me how to run through the lawn sprinklers.

Have you ever met a famous person?
Yes, Ronald McDonald at the book fair this year. And "Bob", Spongebob at another fair!

How do you spend your free time? What hobbies do you have?
Set up a track in the living room and play choo-choo. Watch the Disney Channel's Chuggington or Sesame Street. I now recognize the Sesame Street song and ask to watch "street" in the mornings. We also go to a lot of activities with a bunch of kids from the mommy group.

What kind of people do you like?
Anyone that likes to run and chase me at the park, kids with choo-choo's or cars, happy people that give hugs

What kind of people do you not like?
Kids that hit or are mean, I don't run into that much so I don't understand it. I try to give them hugs and they shove me away. Also, those strange kids that sit down and color forever. They are too boring for me.

What's something you do well?
Smile, laugh, run, eat, play, hug

Are you a 'morning' or 'night' person?
Morning, always better after a full nights sleep.

What is your day like? (When do you get up? What do you do all day? When do you go to sleep? Etc.)
I get up around 6am, but mom doesn't always get me out of my room until 6:30am. Then we go to the living room and get a morning drink then I get set up to watch Sesame Street while mom makes me something for breakfast. After breakfast and Sesame Street we will start getting dressed and ready to go out. I always take mommy her shoes to make sure she knows I want to go out. Usually by 9am we are heading out the door for some activity with the mommy group. We either go to the park, the library, the zoo, gymnastics, the pool...there's always something to do in the morning.

After our activity we have a snack/lunch then head home for naptime around noon. My naptime is getting shorter. A lot of days its only about an hour and a half. When I wake up again sometimes we go to the store for groceries or else we just play at home. At home we either play choo-choo's or cars or we go outside and swim in the pool or ride my cycle around the complex. Sometime between 4 and 5 daddy comes home from work so we go inside to have dinner. I'll watch tv with daddy. Sometimes we'll color or play with play-doh.

Around 6pm I start my bath and winding down for the night. Mommy will put my jammies on and I will chill with daddy a bit longer. Then mommy will read me stories in my room. She'll tuck me into my new toddler bed with Chewy and then give me a kiss. She turns on my bedtime music, turns off the reading lamp and then closes the door. I like it dark in my room. I made her take the nightlight out so I could sleep better.

I have lots of busy days. We try to stay home once a week, but it doesn't always happen. The days we stay home I usually end up tearing the house apart!

Zoo Animals

Peter and I joined some friends at the zoo again this week. We love the zoo! Such a great, cheap outing for us! I had an "emergency" when I got there though...my camera was out of batteries! I headed into the gift shop to get some new ones and Peter found a cute zoo hat while we were in there. It fit him so perfectly that I gave in and bought it for him. The zoo worker ended up scanning Peter's head because he wouldn't take it off.


While we waited for our friends to arrive Peter decided to chase the ducks around. He almost got close enough to pet them!


Every time we go to the zoo we spend a good 10 minutes feeding the ducks in the pond. Peter likes to throw them food and laughs at them when they splash around to get to it fast.


Peter is liking elephants lately. He decided to show the elephant his impression of a flamino, or "go" as he calls them.


"Raff tall!"


Peter LOVES turtles! He thinks they are the coolest thing ever. His stuffed turtle from Guam sleeps at the foot of his bed.


Peter pretending he's a "Tur-el too!"


Stretching out in the playground log.


Coloring with friends in the hand-on exhibit area. Guess what they get to color? Turtles! Peter has finally learned to hold the paper down with one hand when he colors. We are working on learning colors a lot lately. Mostly he knows blue, green, and pink. Sometimes we can get black or yellow, too.


Peter also is pretty funny when he hears something. Any time he hears a choo-choo or a bird or just a loud noise he will stop and try to listen for it. I started pointing at my ears and saying "listen" but Peter sticks his fingers IN his ears to listen! Silly boy!


After being at the zoo for a little bit some school field trips started coming in. It got busy! Peter doesn't like all the other kids running and screaming around. I don't remember my field trips being so crazy. Here they seem to unload, get in the zoo and just get set free. It gets a little insane. We ended up losing our group and leaving halfway through. Oh well, thankfully we can always go again!

Mommy's Little Tree-hugger

Ever since Peter started walking himself out to the car we have had problems getting him from our front door to the parking lot. One of our solutions was to have him go from tree to tree along the way giving them hugs. Peter has turned into a big tree-hugger now. No matter where we go, inevitably he will find a tree to hug!

Save Planet Earth

Happy Earth Day! We are trying to do more of the 3 R's in our home this month: Reduce, Reuse Recycle. Plus, its just another way to save money!

On Earth Day we went to the mall to visit the Disney Store. If a kid turned in 6 empty plastic bottles to be recycled they gave them a free hat! We were some of the first in line and Peter got a free "Waves of Change" blue hat and a Save Planet Earth bag.


Of course, once we were IN the Disney store Peter was obsessed with everything from the Cars movie. He wanted to get every car they had. I still had a Disney gift card burning a hole in my pocket from Christmas so I steered him over towards the Cars gift pack.


He was so excited to look at the Cars and get them out to play with them. I ended up opening them in the food court and he played on the floor for a little bit.


Next, we decided to head over to the playland to let him run for a little bit. It has been rainy and cold this week so we haven't been outside much. He needed a little time to just run and climb on things.


And boy did he climb! He figured out how to climb on top of the helicopter there. Thankfully he stays low on it for now and doesn't try to stand up. But, I'm sure that'll come soon enough. Momma just holds her breath until he gets back down.

Peter's New Pet (video)

Peter got to play a few carnival games all by himself. That's the joy of being a cute little kid! He gets lots of extra free shots! One game he had to throw ping pong balls into bowls of water. He ended up winning some pretty Betta fish!


The next day we went to the store and got him a tank, rocks and plants and even a little turtle to decorate the bowl.


We put his fish on Peter's bookshelf so he can look at them and take care of them. (Yeah, lets hope this works!)


There's even some cute video on the blog. Peter likes to watch his fishies swim!

Pima County Fair

Last week we won 4 free admission tickets to the Pima County Fair. Wednesday night after John got home from work we went out to spend the night at the fair. The fairgrounds have lots of animals, carnival games, shows, and it was one dollar ride night!


Peter isn't quite tall enough to go on most of the rides. He did get to ride a train with mommy. His favorite though was an obstacle course. We snuck him in, he was about an inch shorter than he was supposed to be. Unfortunately mommy & daddy were too tall and couldn't go in with him. Peter had to climb up a rope ladder, go through tunnels, go down slides. crawl through a ball pit, and swerve through punching bags. He didn't understand that it was a maze and you only go one direction. He was stuck in there for a good 30 minutes! Finally he went down the exit slide with a big smile on his face.


There was a shark show there too. Peter got to go into a shark cage.


And he wanted up on mommy's shoulders to watch the show. Wasn't much to it so we left early. After seeing the sharks in Guam this was lame. :)


John was obsessed with all the crazy rides they had. There were tons that whipped you around in circles and upside down. But he really wanted to do the Mega Drop! No matter how hard he tried he couldn't talk us into going with him. He had a blast going really high and then getting dropped in a free fall. Peter was a little scared for him because he kept seeing the ride fall so fast and everybody screaming. The minute John got off the ride all smiles Peter HAD to get a hug and have his daddy hold him.


Peter's favorite ride was the carousel. He rode one of the biggest horses there was on the outside lane. He hated having to wait for everyone else to load.


He held on tight and didn't even need mommy there to help him.


But mom was there anyway. Taking pictures!


Mommy did it again. She is the Carnival Queen! The water racing game is the best! She won Peter a big green dragon!


Peter loves his new green dragon!

Truck Trek

This past weekend we went to a Truck display at one of the local schools. They brought in all kinds of vehicles: flashy cars, garbage trucks, tractors, horse & buggy, recycling truck, a bulldozer, an excavator, a firetruck, a police car, ATV's.... Basically if it had a steering wheel it was there!


Peter got to drive his first John Deere tractor.


I told him he was reliving his Iowa roots!


He also liked to explore the big shovel...thank goodness the keys were not in there. Not too many times I'll let him get this close to one of these! He had a blast being able to get right up close though!

He loved driving the excavator. The main driver was there and let Peter push all the buttons and showed him how the handles all worked. Peter loved it. I'm sure whenever they started it back up all the lights were flashing and wipers were going.


We met about a dozen of our friends running around the giant parking lot. Peter's girlfriend Abigail was there and they rode in a 4X4 together. I like this picture. It looks like Peter is lost and Abigail just wants him to pull over for directions. :)

Flashback: To the Early Days

I just "updated" the blog with all the past entries. If you go to the main page on the right hand side you can now rewind back to 2007 to my first sonogram with Peter. In the archive there are now photos and videos from his EARLY days. I know you have probably seen them all before, but now I have an online record. I figured I should get them up for posterity!

Updating Blog

Just a quick note to let you know I am going to start adding some OLD posts to the blog and post-date them. They were emails I sent out before I started the blog so all of them are from when Peter was just a baby. I'm not sure how this will work, you may get notices about them so I just wanted to give you a heads up!

Spring Fling

Last weekend we went to the final closing day of the University of Arizona's Spring Fling Carnival. We waited until John got off work and got in free with some canned food donations. Spring Fling is one of the largest student run carnivals in the country. There are tons of rides, carnival games and lots of food


We splurged and played a few carnival games. Our favorite is the one where you shoot water at a target and race each other in accuracy. There is always a guaranteed winner so John and I just played each other once and won Peter a bright florescent elephant. He drug it around with him the entire night!


I also decided I'd try my hand at throwing darts at balloons. I hit the first one so they gave me a second dart for free and I hit another balloon to win a stuffed tiger. I was having a lucky night!


The luck continued over at the food court. It was dinner time, but there was only an hour left of the carnival and the roasted corn booth had made too much corn on the cob! Oh no! Who could possibly eat all this corn?!? WE COULD! We got 3 ears of corn for less than $1 total! Yum yum yum! (Not nearly as good as Iowa corn, but it will do.)


Peter was fascinated by all the lights and all the people. He wanted to go on some of the rides, but he was too short to get on any of them. Maybe next year. The game attendees all wanted to give Peter a free shot. He got the chance to throw rings at ducks, shoot a couple basketballs, and knock over milk bottles. They even offered him a few darts, but mommy stopped that one!

One bad part about our night is that Peter was wearing new shoes and got a big blister on the arch of his foot. It's healing well, but we've had to take care of it all week long.


Peter LOVED his elephant. He liked to take his trunk and touch noses. He'd walk around the carnival holding the trunk to his nose and swinging the elephant around.


We had a fun discount day at the carnival and came home with 2 new friends! Can't beat that!

Storytime Sillies (video)

Peter gets really silly as we wait for storytime. He's been having a hard time sitting still...

Choo-choo, Please! (video)

Just a cute little video of Peter asking me to turn his choo-choo show on. He likes the new show Chuggington on the Disney Channel.

Splash Pad Opening (video)

The closest park to our apartment is about a 10-15 minute drive, but its one of the more popular parks in Tucson. It's big, has fun playgrounds, a water fountain, lots of picnic ramadas, and brand new facilities.


It also has Tucson's one and only splash pad, basically a big giant land of fountains, showers, water guns, and dumping water buckets. When it's 110 in the shade this free water park gets hopping with tons of kids from all over the city. Today it was in the 90's and there was a big celebration to mark its opening day!


Last year Peter was a little scared of all the flying water everywhere. We only went in maybe twice and it resulted in some crying spells so we stayed out the rest of the summer. This year though I was hoping it would be different. He has been loving to take showers with us, so he's had practice. (The other day I went to get my hair wet in the shower then as I was reaching for my shampoo my hand bumped into him! He had taken off all his clothes and gotten in when I wasn't looking.)


At the splash pad today, after about 30 seconds of watching and checking things out he inched forward towards the sprinklers and then giggled and ran right through! He then ran back and forth having the time of his life! He was soaked by the end! I was a little jealous! Mommy was sitting on the sidelines without a swimsuit and sweating in the scorching sun, I got reminded of just how hot it gets here!


I did manage to capture a few videos of Peter though and one is posted up on the blog. He had a great time! Summer is almost here in Arizona!

Toddler Bed Success!!!

I think it is safe to say that Peter has graduated into a toddler bed!!! Woohoo!! Yay! Go Peter!!! He has been soundly sleeping in his toddler bed for naptime and nighttime for the past 4 days. Mommy just got too worried with him climbing out of the crib in the dark and half asleep so we decided one day to have Daddy just take the side of the crib off.


There hasn't been any real problems, he is actually starting to get back into a normal sleep pattern. Part of him wants to drop his mid-day nap so I've been working really hard to tire him out in the morning so that he keeps it. Momma needs a break! We do still put the baby gate up on the door to his room. Sometimes he will fuss for 5 minutes but then he closes the door and goes to bed.


We are SO thankful that he is sleeping better. It makes his behavior in the daytime better too. Plus, mommy and daddy get a few hours to unwind alone. That is something we are always grateful for at the end of a long day!

Family Zoo Outing

We went to a the park with some friends this past week. It's beautiful weather here, summer is starting and its been hitting the 90's sometimes before noon. Allergies are AWFUL! I've been taking Claritin nearly every day.


Peter got to wear his alligator slippers. The day before he had worn some new crocs without socks to play and had gotten a big blister that burst on the side of his foot. It looks pretty nasty and the wound is very raw. I couldn't bear to put him in shoes and he wouldn't stay in the stroller no matter how much it hurt. These slippers are super comfy and soft but they also have a sturdy sole. Problem solved! He's been running around in them for several days now and getting all kinds of smiles from strangers.


Peter ran directly for this rock. Last time I had him pose by it and I guess he decided he needed to pose again. He leaned up against it, looked and me and said "Cheese!"


Peter saw a lady reading one of the zoo signs and he thought he needed to read it too.


At a few of the exhibits they had stamp stations to prove you had seen those animals. Peter got a stamp of an ostrich and zebra on his arms and a baboon on his leg. Peter loves to say "baboon" and runs around the corner looking for their exhibit, but he is a little nervous looking at them and he keeps his distance.


Peter got to wear his Elmo birthday shirt. I totally forgot to have him wear it on his birthday! Oh well, it'll still get use!


One of our friends that met us was Peter's adopted big sister Alicia. She holds Peter's hand and takes him on a tour of the zoo. She's awesome at chasing him down when he tries to run away.


And Peter thinks she is just the funnest person ever. I caught them sneaking a hug in the corner of the crocodile exhibit.


We even got a nice family picture!


Daddy and Peter took a ride on the train around the lake before we went home.


Even though there were 3 empty cars Peter wanted to share the caboose with the only other little kid on the ride. He's such a social little boy!