It’s amazing how a $1.00 package of play dough can make a toddler so happy.

Unfortunately, toddlers like to put everything in their mouths. Then I ran across a recipe for edible play dough. Luckily, my little dude isn’t allergic to peanuts, because this stuff has quite a bit of them in it.

Here’s what I used to make edible play dough…

1 cup peanut butter

2 cups powdered sugar

2 tbls of soft butter, then mix together

The kiddo loved mashing and banging around with the stuff. Oh yeah, and eating it too. You can even make no-bake cookies out of the stuff too. Just put it on wax paper for a few hours to dry out. Playtime in the AM, and a fun snack for after nap. I like to call that a win-win situation.

If you do plan to make cookies out of the stuff I would set part of the dough aside and not let the kids get their grubby little fingers in that portion. There’s nothing like a big fat booger to ruin your appetite.

Gray seemed to think the dogs needed a taste of our delicious concoction. They very much enjoyed the  treat.

I want my baby back, and I ain’t talkin’ about no dang ribs. My tiny baby is growing up way to fast. On Christmas night he climbed out of his crib for the 1st time, so we dropped his crib mattress all the way to the floor. Guess what. He did it again. This is just another negative to having an 18 month old in the 90th percentile in height. Sheesh!

When I took Gray in for his 18 month check up I asked his doctor about this little “issue”. I was afraid he was just to young to move into a toddler bed, and that’s what I was hoping he would tell me. No luck. He said we needed to get him out of the crib STAT. Even though he lands on his feet it only takes one bad fall to severely injure him. That’s the last thing I wanted.

So when Daddy got home the boys goto to work. (Sorry about the pics. I snapped them with my iPhone.)

He loves the change. He climbs in and out of it constantly.

The 1st night was the hardest. I don’t think he really understood that he was going to have to sleep in this new open bed. It took him about 2 hours that 1st night to figure out what he was supposed to do. At first he just played and read books, but by the end of the 1st hour he was at the gate on his doorway crying to be let out. We of course went in there and tried laying with him to show him what we wanted him to do. And that worked until we got up to leave. Teaching him to sleep in this big boy  bed broke my heart way more than sleep training him when he was 5 months old. I’m pretty sure it had to do with the fact that he cried out “Mum, Mum, Mum!” over and over in that sweet tear strained voice.

The second night was way better. He played around in his room for about 5 minutes, and climbed in bed and went to sleep after Derek popped his head in the door and told him to get back in bed. We were beyond surprised. The same thing happened on night 3 and 4. Naps are a little harder to get him to settle down than night time, but I think that has to do with the light and not wanting to stop playing.

I was expecting this transition to be pure torture for both me and him. I don’t know what more to say. We didn’t do anything special or really have the opportunity to put our training plan into action. He really hasn’t given us the opportunity to. The only thing I can think of is that he just really appreciates the freedom and change. I guess he understands more than I gave him credit for.

Here he is during one of his naps. I snuck in and snapped a pic to send to Derek during lunch.

My little big boy. I can’t believe he has already moved out of a crib. He’s not supposed to grow up this fast. I want that baby time back. But since I can’t, I’m savoring every last second I still have of him being small.

I don’t use this acronym much, but OMG!!!! Child, you are HUGE! I took you in for your 18 month check-up and you are weighing in at 28 lbs, and are 34 ins tall. You are still in the 90th percentile for height and the 75th for weight. Sheesh! The doc did say that your weight to height ratio is at 50% so you are exactly where you need to be for how freakishly tall you are.

- You climb on everything these days. Seriously, you never stop moving. Seriously. You are an awesome kid. Not a bad kid at all, but I always have this constant fear that since you are always on the move and don’t like to sit still people are going to think that you are a bad kid, or a hyperactive kid. When all that it really is, is that you are a boy. 110% BOY. Many of my friends have little girls and their kids are just dainty and calm, and will sit still for more than 30 seconds at a time. I really hope they know that having a boy changes everything. I really love having a boy, but you little fellas have more energy than you know what to do with.

- You love playing in the pantry. And now that I’ve moved your snacks down to a reachable shelf you are constantly bringing me items that you want to eat. I honestly think that you would eat anything as long as you found it on “your shelf”.

- You have begun climbing out of your crib so we dropped the mattress down to the floor, and it seemed to stop your escape attempts for a month or so. Or so, is the phrase I want to focus on here. Just last night (at 1am mind you) you woke from a bad dream crying. I usually give you a few minutes to see if you can calm yourself down before I go in to check on you, but within 45 seconds of you waking you had made it out of your crib and were at the gate (your door) crying for “Momma!” Kid I am so not ready to transition you to a toddler bed yet. Please stay in your crib a while longer. Pretty please…with sugar on top!

- You L, to the O, to the V, to the E…..LOVE, trains. You now have quite the collection of wooden tracks and trains, and have gotten quite talented at putting the tracks together. At first you would get frustrated trying to piece the tracks together, but in the past month you really have figured the whole thing out. Your favorite part of playing with your trains are the bridges. You are constantly trying to balance your trains on the “hill” of the bridges, but they never seem to stay. I did notice the other day that you did get one to stay put, and you were beyond thrilled with your little train.

- You do really well at stores, and have yet to make me that totally embarrassed mom that has a crazy fit throwing child in her cart. You love waving at everyone you see. And I must say, the ladies love it. They eat you up. There is something about a wave and a smile from you that makes even the most bitter or sad looking woman/man just light up.

- If there is one thing that brings you massive amounts of joy it would be bubbles. We own so many bottles of bubbles, bubble wands, bubble swords, and other bubble paraphernalia I’m about to have an intervention for both of us.

- You are finally saying “Mom” and “Momma”. You’ve been able to say them for some time now it’s just that you would never use them to name me. Everyone else you would name them by name, but me you would just sit there with a blank stare on your face. It was weird. We knew you knew my name because you would say cry it when you were extremely upset or hurt. About 2 weeks ago you finally started saying who I was and it was like music to my ears.

- You chest bump the dogs. They hate it. I think it’s kinda funny, but as any good Mom would do…I don’t encourage it.

- You still hate being put in a car seat. I still hate having to put you in your car seat.

- You love laying on your belly while reading books and playing with toys. You saw Daddy do it one day and now it’s your go-to book reading position. It’s pretty much precious.

- You are finally getting a bit more hair on that head of yours, but not much.

- We just discovered Mickey Mouse Clubhouse around here, and I’m kicking myself for it taking this long. You love Mickey. When you hear that theme song come on you come skidding into the room and start shaking your hips and smiling bigger than I’ve ever seen. You even say “Toodles” when Mickey calls for him. I can’t wait to take you to see him one day.

You are just about as sweet as you can be. Thanks for being my tiny Squishy Baby.

Love,

Mum (that’s what is sounds like when you say Mom…so cute!)

Guess what. You would think that frosting a chocolate cake with thick fluffy white frosting you would no longer see the chocolate cake. Wrong. All I saw was white fluffy frosting with little brown speckles everywhere! Then it hit me…Cool Whip! I slathered some on my speckled smash cake and got to shooting.

Go all in or go home. Am I right?

This one is Derek’s favorite photo of Gray. We actually just had it made into a 16″ x 16″ black and white photo canvas. I used Canvas People, and was very pleased with the finished product. Plus, they always have amazing sales.

Then he felt it was missing something….a foot. His. Foot.

Davis, Gray’s Uncle, drew a letter G in the smash cake aftermath. To be honest, he didn’t really eat much of the cake. Davis and Derek actually ate a good portion of the cake towards the end of the shoot. Grayson thought it was funny to feed the cake to everyone. Of course, the boys took him up on his cake sharing offer.

After his cake was all good and smashed it was time to hose off.

• You are a solid little boy. As of your 15m check-up, you are in the 90 percentile for height, and in the 70th percentile for weight. When I took you in for pinkeye a couple of weeks ago she said you weighed 27lbs. No wonder I get tired holding you.
• You are still a champion sleep and have been since 5-6 months old. THANK YOU! You were not the best sleeper for the 1st 5 months of your life, so I appreciate the about-face. Up until 2 weeks ago you went down for the night at 6:30pm and woke around 8-8:30am everyday. Just before you turned 1 you began taking 1 nap per day. It usually last around 3 hours. You are just like your Dad. You both love require hours and hours of beauty sleep. Now you are hitting the hay around 7:30pm.

• You love spinning and spinning and spinning. It’s so cute. Sometimes you fall down and that’s when it gets really funny. You find falling on your bottom hilarious, and so you will repeatedly spin just so you fall on your tush.

• You are a grandpas’ boy to no end. Mommy and Grandmas just don’t get the massive smile out of you these days like Daddy and your Grandpas do.

• You at times have a nasty litte temper, but usually only show it when we are at home or getting in or out of the car. Don’t worry you still have the masses fooled into thinking you are a sweet little angel. I on the other hand know better.

• One of your favorite things to do is take either your bubble mower (sans bubbles) or one of your riding toys and push it, while running and screaming “run, run, run, run” “run, run, run, run”, around the the house chasing the dogs or ramming these toys into doors or walls, and the baby gate. The dogs are less than thrilled about this game. You are all boy I tell you, all boy.

• You still love your Giggy (that’s what you call Wrigley and Cohen sometimes) more than words can say. I truly believe you leave food on your face/body just so she will come and lick you. Anytime you are near her you smile real big, squench up your little face, point your fingers at her, and start squealing her name over and over her. Then you hunker down, tuck your chin into your chest, in hopes that she notices you and comes to lick your face. Sometimes you even walk like that towards her to help her out a bit. LOVE. THIS. As a matter of fact, most of the time you call BOTH of the dogs “Giggy”. You can say “CoCo”, but I guess you choose not to.

• You love to vacuum. It use to be that you made me hold you when I vacuumed, and now you won’t let me touch the thing at all until you’ve had your fill. It’s quite cute really. You turn it on and off and push it anywhere your little arms can carry it.

• I’ve been working with you a bit on sign language. You don’t know a ton of signs, because I don’t know many and forget what they are to often to use them all the time when I talk to you. You do know a few basics that help us know what you want. So, that’s nice. I’ll continue to work with you in effort to help you tell us what you want instead of throwing a fit. That’s always nice. Here is a list of the ones you know currently. There might be a few more, but I’m drawing a blank.

• more
• all done (a.k.a.- finished)
• eat
• drink
• fan
• hot
• ball
• brush teeth
• bath
• milk
• juice
• apple
• baby
• O’s (for cheerios)

• You love knocking on things: doors, windows, walls, tables. Really, anything that makes noise when your tiny little knuckles hit it. While knocking you also say “knock, knock, knock”. It’s pretty stinkin’ cute, Kiddo.

• You give kisses with your lips puckered, and afterwards you say “mmmmuuahhh!” I beg for kisses these days just to to see you pucker up. I love it.

Looks like I may want to rethink my pantry organization I tackled yesterday. Within 10 minutes of waking someone had already helped himself to two GIANT graham crackers. Maybe he was just trying to tell me that he wanted breakfast………….nah.

This head tilt cracks me up. It started last week. If he thinks something he is doing is funny or when the theme song to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse comes on the head tilt comes out. I crack up everytime.

Since Gray hasn’t been throwing things as much lately and the kid was in desperate need of having a poopy diaper changed, so I allowed him to play with my iPhone while I changed him. Lets just say he knows how to unlock it and access the camera. I say this because I opened my photo stream to find a photo play-by-play of what it looks like to have your diaper changed by me.

See that big green empty wall to my right? I’ve got big plans for it.

And the grand finale…

Wow! I look like Shrek.