Time-outs

Here is our little man in a time out, kitchen-corner style.

And here is what we found the other night, carefully placed in a time out of it's own: His MACK truck. And when I asked if his Mack could come out of time-out, he readily agreed, telling him "all done time-out, Mack" like a little boy who clearly understands the routine. I have no idea what Mack did to earn his spot in the corner, but I'm sure it made perfect sense to Dylan at the time.

The funny part was when we turned around a few minutes later to find this one. I guess his Lightening McQueen deserved one too!

Can I just say that I'm an IDIOT?

For starters, Dylan's swim lesson was so much better today. I guess practicing our "kick, kick, kicking" at the edge of the bed, arms stretched out like superman WORKED.
And we even squeezed in a quick lunch date with Ryan with some Taco Bell (yeah, nutritious little meal for the fam...) before heading home to wait for the plumber all afternoon.

Wanna hear how much of an idiot I truly am?
Ok. So here goes: I came home after meeting ryan with Taco Bell, exhausted, but managed to read about 5 books to dylan and put him to bed. Then I decided that since I didn't know what time the plumber actually would come, being that they gave me a 3 hour window and I was exhausted (apparently!), I could lay down and wake up when they rang or knocked on the door. Here's the tool part: I never woke up. They apparently knocked and rang the bell, called me, etc. for 20 minutes!

I'm now sitting here waiting for them to call me back, wondering what I'm going to say. How lame to have to admit that I'm such a slug that I missed their appointment because I took a nap?

monkey see, monkey do

Sitting in his highchair, Dylan waves his finger in the air back and forth at daddy, saying "no no no" with a fickle smile.

We exchange a knowing look: The mimicking has begun. We must really start to be careful what we say and do around him (not like we didn't before, but it didn't seem AS pressing before now).

He copies my dance moves in the car, our expressions, and crosses his legs and leans up against the car just like daddy while waiting for mommy. He pushes his foot in my way while I paint my toenails, indicating that he wants his painted like mommy's.

And yesterday he started singing. The tune? The gymboree Clean-Up song, but his words are "bee-bup, bee-bup" - which just cracked us up when we realized that of all the songs we sing together, he picked up this one to sing first (goes to show what neat-freaks his parents truly are!)

What's next, I ask.

Walk a mile in my shoes

Apparently there is a new game at our house. Dylan has a thing for fetching my shoes out of the closet, carefully putting them on his own feet, and sliding around the room with a big grin slapped across his face. Like a little boy hard at work, he grunts while sorting through which pair he wants to wear, carries them out into the room, and then giggles once he has them donned and comes toddling over towards me.

I can do it myself dammit

We are rounding the developmental corner into the land of the terrible twos...

Dylan has definitely entered the stage where it is insulting to attempt to help him feed himself. And isn't he so graceful with that spoon? (And let me just state for the record that Ryan and I both lean a bit towards the clean-freak side of the fence, so when food gets flung off the side of his highchair, you can just imagine how it makes our skin crawl)!

And one of his favorite games is to unpack my cabinets, tossing my cutting boards and pans into the center of the kitchen floor all around himself. Oh, and don't let me forget to tell you how the smoke detector has gone off (repeatedly now) after Dylan has managed to crank the oven dial over to "clean." We have installed an oven lock and multiple cabinet locks, but the oven dials are still fairly accessible to a highly motivated toddler, I have recently learned. Thankfully none of our dinners have been ruined as a result, but we have had a few close calls.

Finding Teddybear

Tonight after Dylan's regular routine of bathtime, nursing, cereal-time, book, and snuggling, we put him down for the night (swaddled with pacifier). He cried and cried as usual. Then he got quiet and after a few more minutes, I asked Ryan to go check on him to make sure he was okay (probably just asleep I thought). Nope. Ryan came back and said, "you've got to come see this!" I followed him back into Dylan's nursery to find Dylan unswaddled, rotated around to the opposite side of the crib, smiling and playing with a teddybear he apparently selected from the other end of the crib. He was too cute. I videotaped a few minutes of him snuggling and smiling with his new friend for the record before getting him re-ready for bed. Now he is back to his former state, swaddled and crying himself to sleep for the night. Silly Dylan.