The cuteness

Jax is at such a great age. Yes, 2-year-olds are tough. And yes, he drives me crazy a lot. But he is also so much fun! He is always making me laugh and saying cute things and being so, SO sweet. 

 (The end table makes for a much better seat)

He constantly comes up to me and gives me hugs and says "awwwww.... Mommy.... awwww" and "I miss you too, Mommy". It melts my heart.

 (Trouble maker!!!)

The other day, he squatted down, held out his hands and said "Mojo, come to papa". Ha! Where does he get these things?!

 (Apparently Maroon 5 needed some help with drumming)

On the way home from gymnastics this morning, Jax decided to name each restaurant we passed. The whole ride was narrated with "I want Red Robin", "I want Panda", "I want ice cream", "I want McNodles", "I want Chic way (ChickFilA)". You would think we only ever eat out!

(Because it's much more fun to watch a movie on the tiny DVD player than on the regular TV)

He loves to sing songs. His favorites are "Wheels on the Bus", "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", and "ABC's". His ABC's go like this- "ABC, ABC, next time see you soon". Ha! He hasn't quite learned that one yet. He also started counting to 10 (in the right order!). He loves to play hide and seek, and tag. He loves Ring Around the Rosie. He constantly asks me to make him popcorn. He would eat it at every meal if I would let him. He insists on putting his own shoes on. He loves his "puppy Mojo" and is always asking "Mommy, where's my puppy Mojo?"

He is such a sweet, sweet boy and I couldn't have asked for a better kid!!

Zipquest

Ryan's birthday was yesterday, and I had been planning a birthday surprise for him for the past few weeks. There is a new place in town to go zip lining called Zipquest and I have been wanting to try it out. I decided a while ago that it would be a great birthday present for Ryan. It is rather pricey, but I was lucky enough to come across a Groupon that made it half price!

I was actually able to surprise Ryan with it!! Keeping fun things secret is really hard for me, so I was very proud of myself for keeping my mouth shut. I was also very proud of myself for wanting to do the zip lining in the first place because I am not very adventurous. This was a big step for me!

Ryan was very surprised and very happy about his present. We had a blast!

Randoms

I've got lots of pictures for y'all this week! It's been a good week... It's finally fall! Our weather dropped drastically overnight on Thursday. It was in the upper 80's on Thursday, then lower 60's on Friday! It's been amazing, but we had to do some last minute cold weather clothes shopping for Jax. I'm certainly not complaining :)

Here's my sweet boy helping me with grocery shopping.



Did I mention that I made homemade goldfish crackers? No? Well I did. I'm super cool ;)



Jax was helping out Maroon 5... Apparently they needed some more drums.



"Mama, got my sunglasses, not bright anymore!"



I finished Jax's Halloween costume this week! Pirate says.... Arghhhh!



I will call the following group of pictures "Jax was playing games on my phone but turned on the camera and took 785,538,528 pictures of himself"









(I guess he figured out the swap button at this point.... No more face shots)






Some of our cold weather clothes shopping. Jax decided laying on the bottom of the cart was super cool.



We went to the mall today (blargh) to get new tires on Ryan's car. We ate lunch, rode on the carousel, some quarter rides, and window shopped. This is Jax's "happy face". Ha!






Yay cold weather clothes!!

Look who's a big boy!

There have been 2 big developments in the Hansen household over the last 2 weeks.

Development #1

A certain 2-year-old is now in a toddler bed! I had been putting it off as long as possible for two reasons. (And really, we could have waited longer but we decided to bite the bullet). Reason one: he never tried to climb out of his crib so we decided to just keep him contained for the sake of.... us being selfish. Ha! Two: he's growing up too fast and a big boy bed = a big boy. And that makes me sad.

We decided to bite the bullet and he has been doing SO well! He didn't try to get out of bed, he just laid down and went right to sleep. And in the morning, he still called for me to come get him. It took about a week before he realized that he could get out of bed once he woke up. This is fine except that he wakes up at the crack of dawn. BOO! He was "sleeping in" until 630 or 7. Then he woke up at 6. Then he woke up at 545. Then he woke up at 520. Then he woke up at 445. No joke. I took him back to his bed but it only lasted about 5 minutes before he was up again. I finally got him to lay with Ryan and I in our bed for awhile.

So the last few mornings have included a lot of experiments to figure out what to do. He's consistently waking up at 530 these days, which is WAY to early for me. Sometimes I put him back in bed and he goes back to sleep until about 615. Other days he climbs up in our bed. Other days I turn on cartoons for him in his playroom and either go back to bed or sleep on the couch next to him. Y'all I am not a morning person! And my smarty pants kiddo realized that by saying "mama, I have to pee pee", that I would get up with him instead of putting him back to bed. It's still a work in progress, but overall he is doing amazingly well.
(PS- these pictures are of him pretending to be asleep so he can demonstrate how he is such a big boy :) )

Development #2

He is pretty much fully (daytime) potty trained!! The last two days he has been in big boy undies all day and hasn't had any accidents. AND has told me when he has to go potty instead of me always having to ask. I'm not going to tackle night time potty for awhile because most days he still wakes up with a pretty wet diaper. But, I am so proud of him for doing so well during the day!

But again... big boy undies = a big boy. And that makes me sad!

Jumping out of a helicopter

Ryan started out in the Army in the 82nd Airborne Division. So he's been jumping out of airplanes and helicopters for the past 7.5 years. Family can often go to the drop zone to watch the jump, but it's common for them to be at odd hours and/or take forever so I rarely go. But today was a smaller jump because it was out of a helicopter! It was scheduled for 8am and Ryan was on the 9th lift (6 people jump at a time), so it was good timing for us and I knew Jax would love it. We left the house at 715, ran through Starbucks to get a pumpkin spice latte (yay fall!!), then headed out to the drop zone. Jax had such a blast watching the helicopter taking off and landing, and watching all the soldiers jumping out. He kept saying "I want parachute! Me!".

Here's Daddy and Jax watching some of the first jumpers. Those dots at the top of the picture are them!


Daddy loading up


There he is!


(the smoke is so they know where the wind is blowing)


Yay Daddy!


You're alive!


Here, let me help you carry your helmet, Daddy


Shaking out his 'chute


Waiting patiently so we can go get some breakfast


Pirate Jax celebrating Daddy's successful jump with some yummy food


I'm so glad Jax is old enough to enjoy what his Daddy does for a living!

Randoms

This week has been so uneventful. Boo! We are on break from our mommies group. The weather has been rainy so Hubs has taken the good car to work. So Jaxers and I have been stuck at home for the last two days. I'm so excited for gymnastics today so we can get out of the house!

Here's some iPhone pictures from the last week and a half. I'm obsessed with Nutella so we've been eating a lot of toast recently. Jax certainly doesn't complain!





Mojo is more like a human than a dog. She does so many things that are un-doglike. But this is a total dog thing... How does she breathe??





We've been spending more time outside (when it's not raining) because the weather has been in the mid 80's! This kid likes to get dirty!





Now that Daddy is home, Jax has resumed shaving with him each morning. Love.





Ryan's side of the family loves popcorn. Apparently it's genetic because Jax loves popcorn too. Every few minutes I would hear him randomly say "yummmmm popcornnnnn!". Pretty darn cute, if you ask me :)





Jax has reached another big milestone and I'll be posting about that in the next day or two, so come back soon!

A trip to the zoo!

I started writing this post about another poop story, but decided that I didn't want to dedicate another post to that topic.

In brief-- Jax had a poop accident on the floor, Mojo ate about 90% of it (GROSS), we went to run errands, we came home to thrown-up poop on the floor, Mojo started yelping and walking around all crazy, we thought she was dying from poo poisoning so we rushed her to the vet, turns out it was just cramps, all is well and life has moved on. OH, the joys of potty training.

Now to the good stuff... our trip to the zoo! We decided last minute on Saturday morning to head to the only zoo here in NC. It's in Asheboro which is about 2 hours away. We showered, ate breakfast and got on the road around 830. Jax did great in the car and it was an easy drive. Somehow Ryan and Jax were matching and we didn't even plan that! Ha!

Jax liked looking at all the animals, but not for long. Once he saw the animal, then he was good and said "I'm done". But he LOVED this seal and kept asking for more. It was fun to have the seal swim by so close.

Jax enjoyed the things to play on/in/with more than he enjoyed the animals. I think that is pretty common at this age. It's way more fun to play than it is to stare at something! This polar bear cave was fun!

This playground was full of giant bugs! A giant spider web to climb up, a praying mantis to climb through, beetles to slide down, spider tunnels and other fun things to play with.

Jax really liked walking around and getting as close to the animals as possible. He sat in front on these tortoises and followed them around as they crawled from one side to the other.

We purchased to special tickets that included a carousel ride, a Dora and Diego 4D movie and a chance to feed the giraffes. Unfortunately, the giraffes didn't want to eat once we got there. But Jax loved the carousel and the movie!

This white alligator was SO cool. It looked fake!

This ostrich was so close to the fence. He (she?) was just standing there looking at everyone for the longest time. Jax had fun with it being so close!

Toward the end of the day he was getting really fussy. It was well past his nap time so we rushed through the last little bit. But he did have fun playing in these giant eggs.

He slept the entire way home and we had to wake him up when we got home at 5 so that he would go to sleep that night. It was a really fun family day... it's so nice to have Ryan home again!