Partypalooza for Week 101!

Hello hello everyone! What a fun time this week - 2 parties this weekend! I'll get to that later, but first...

• Tyler has recently developed night terrors. Super sad. What we first thought was him just trying to drive me nuts by not sleeping through the night we've now identified as night terrors (thanks to google). He'll wake up, in a sweat, and cry for me alarmingly. I'll try to comfort him but he doesn't even seem to notice I'm there - even with his eyes wide open - and he'll throw this crazy inconsolable tantrum. It's been really rough on us. We're trying some different things (ceiling fan on low at night, earlier bedtime to avoid overtiredness, waking him a little after a couple hours to disrupt his sleep pattern, etc), in hopes that something will work. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
• Tyler is obsessed with Thomas the Train. Now that is really driving me nuts. All he wants is to watch Thomas (which I admit, I let him in order to get him to eat anything I want!), which isn't such a big deal since it's not like a long period of time... but the annoying part is that he only wants to watch the parts of the episode where there's singing! Lots of rewinding on the DVR...
• We took out our travel high chair this week when Tyler's BFF came over for a visit, and now Tyler only wants to sit on that, and avoids his normal wooden high chair. I think he likes it because he's actually sitting and eating at the table with us.
• One of the funny things Tyler has been saying this week is "I'm NAKED!", when we're undressing him for bathtime. Seriously, where does he learn this? He'll laugh, rub his tummy, and yell, "I'm Naked!!" over and over again.
  

Here's one of my favorite parts of the day - when Tyler eats his vegetables! This one shows him eating broccoli - he'll point out the baby trees to show us before he eats them. I've found that he's not a fan of carrots - but... he'll eat anything for Thomas! :)
I thought this photo was hilarious - Tyler with his little sunglasses and the pop-gun we got him at Knott's Berry Farm. It looks like he's about to head out and hunt some deer or something. :)
This week was also Tyler's 3rd haircut! Didn't go too badly, but definitely not as smooth as his last one. His hair grows so fast, and with Summer coming, we figured it was a perfect time for a bigger boy haircut. Here's Tyler before his haircut.

During...he was happily eating his snack cup until I noticed how much hair had gotten into it! Yuck!

And afterwards! Ok, so I wasn't too thrilled about how the stylist gel'd it up, but Will assured me we could make it look the way we wanted later. The cutest part was Tyler pointing at Will (who was also getting a haircut) and saying: "Ba-Ba, spikey!" and pointing to his own hair.

This week Tyler's BFF also came over to play. They are getting... better... at sharing. Tyler was pretty possessive of his new train set - even though there are a ton of trains! There was a great sharing moment though - Tyler was running around with a big bunch of balloons (see previous post) with Vincent chasing him. Vincent wanted the balloons, and Tyler was like - "No!" and tried to give them to me. I said, "Tyler, share you balloons, let Vincent play with them" and Tyler immediately gave them to Vincent and said "Here Vincent!". Progress!

Here's a short clip of Tyler and Vincent eating dinner. I had put on Thomas and you can see how excited Tyler gets when the music comes on. It's time to DANCE!

Poor Mojo. Our cat is used to one toddler pouncing on him, but two was pretty overwhelming. Good thing Mojo is a good sport. The boys were chasing him around the house with REALLY loud, ear piercing shrieks! Mojo's got used to it though, heehee.

Our Cookie Monster! I got this towel for Tyler and he was excited to wear it (ok, well not at first, but after he saw his reflection in the mirror he loved it) and play with his cookie monster bath sponge. I'm kind of annoyed that the head part doesn't seem to fit him though - it's too tight?! Sheesh. Wait, or is it supposed to be like that? I guess if it was bigger it'd cover his face? Hm...

Saturday was quite a busy day for us. In the morning/noon we headed to this AWESOME park in Tustin - Pioneer Road Park, for one of Tyler's friend's Darren's birthday party. I am in LOVE with this park and will be returning very soon. It has a great playground area, swings, wagons to play in, AND a water park area! Here's Tyler checking out a wagon. Spikey hair like daddy!

The park also had this great large covered area, perfect for getting out of the sun. Not that it was that sunny though. I think it even sprinkled a little bit - but it was still really warm. Weird June weather. It was cute seeing lots of Tyler's school friends there with their parents - even better chatting with them also!

There was this really long slide that Tyler loved going down. Like super high! Tyler has no problems with slides like these, he'll come down and run to get back on - and it's a pretty long hike up for him.Here's Tyler and his BFF Vincent. The boys in their class are SO cute. When we first got there, Darren (birthday boy) saw Tyler and literally yelled 'Ty-lerrr!' and ran towards Tyler with his arms wide open. Tyler ran to him too and they hugged. It was painfully cute. Then when Tyler saw his other guy friends, they'd like do a weird little dance of excitement. No reaction like this for his girl friends... hm... Oh, by the way, Tyler's munching on an egg roll here. First time, and I was really surprised that he even was willing to try it.

I was chatting with another parent when I looked over at Will and the boys and saw Tyler on a swing. I seriously ran over there mid sentence to get a photo. Never in Tyler's life has he ever sat on a swing - he just totally refuses! Peer pressure is pretty powerful I guess?

After a bit, Tyler got bored of sitting on the swing, and decided to swing on them a different way. Heehee.

Ok, so I mentioned the waterplay area at this park. Somehow I had totally forgotten that the invitation mentioned this (in my defense, it was an added sheet of paper in the envelope, not the actual invitation). Anyway, we were not prepared and had no shorts/swimtrunks/swim diapers. Tyler was itching to play with his friends, so we just took off his jeans and let him run around. Some of the parents offered us a swim diaper, but, eh, we were too lazy to change him. Turns out we didn't need to, because Tyler didn't even want to get wet! But yes, I know, pretty ghetto of us to have him running around in a diaper!

The water play area has a section where water comes up through the ground, another section where water sprays from the wall, and still another section where you have these horse-shaped cannons that shoot water that you can aim. Tyler only got wet when he was near the horses. He wasn't even very close, but the cannons change water intensity depending on direction (weird huh!), an older kid had pointed it in his direction, and BAMN! - Tyler got hit right in the face and soaked. He was NOT happy about that. Here's Tyler and his boys running around shirtless. He was proclaiming himself naked at this time too. Thank goodness he wasn't really!

Back to Tyler and his girl friends. Can boys be shy of the opposite sex at such a young age? Here's Nikki, the most beautiful little girl I've ever seen!, giving Tyler a hug good-bye. Check out Tyler's face. It didn't change at all the whole time she was hugging him. As in, I'm too cool, see ya. Hmm..

I can not believe that Tyler will be two next month. I can NOT believe it. He's such a big boy now, with all his talking, and understanding and conniving. This picture really made me realize how he's definitely not a baby anymore. It's been so exciting watching him grow and learn things and surprise us!

Here's Tyler hanging out with one of his friends Dylan. Dylan's dad is actually an Irvine Police Officer and our neighborhood is in his patrol area. How cool is that!

It was a wonderful party. Super fun for the kids. Unfortunately, we missed out on the 2nd birthday party we were supposed to go to that day. We had planned to only stop by party #1 for a bit before heading to the next (both were at noon) but Tyler was having so much fun we couldn't pull him away. (Happy 30th Birthday to Jason if you're reading this! So sorry we missed out on your party!!)

After the party ended, we headed to event #3 of the day. Baby Shower in Chino Hills for our good friends! First we had a pit stop in Newport to pick up 6 dozen Sprinkles cupcakes. You read that right! I had to control myself to not eat any on the drive to Chino. The party was at Wild Kingdom, an inflatable playzone place. It was REALLY fun! What was great was that they also had toys for the littler kids to play with. Tyler was totally not into any of the inflatables when we got there, so whew, what a relief there were other toys.

After watching others (mostly adults here) play, Tyler was game! He went pretty crazy running through the obstacle courses. Oh man, did we work up a sweat! Here's a family picture inside one of the tunnels.

I had visited a similar place in Irvine a couple weeks ago thinking of maybe having Tyler's birthday party there. I was a little hesitant since I didn't know how 2 year olds would necessarily react to these giant inflatable things. Tyler LOVES bounce houses, but it really depends on his mood. Once he's more comfortable, he's crazy about them! Here's Tyler bouncing around.

Here's Tyler and Will playing in one of the inflatable playzones. Thank goodness Tyler is quite hardy and bendy!

Here's Tyler and myself crawling through one of the obstacle courses. The slide at the end of this was pretty steep, but not the steepest on there. It was a perfect height for Tyler.

Here's a short clip of Will and Tyler coming down the slide to this obstacle course. He loved it!

Tyler was loving the toys there too. They had all kinds!

The BIG slide. Sigh. After the first time we went down, Tyler decided he wanted to go by himself. Not a good idea. Never again! He got a little scared and turned his body and ended up sliding down on his face! OUCH! I can speak from experience because in a crazy relay race with friends that day, I slid down head first and got a HORRIBLE burn on my elbow. I'm talking oozing flesh burn. Good thing Tyler didn't have any noticeable injuries, but I'm sure it wasn't pleasant..

It was the craziest baby shower I've ever been to. I don't think normal people do it like that! It was fun for seriously everyone. I had to have 10 minute cooldowns between inflatable excursions - those things get you so hot! Here are the boys downing baby bottles full of beer. And see those Edible Creations? Delicious! Tyler was SO excited about being able to choose which strawberry he wanted. :)

Here's Tyler playing with our friend Phil and a megaphone. They were having so much fun, it was so cute! You can tell when someone is just great with kids!

Here's Tyler, myself and the mom-to-be Shirley. We go way back! I rubbed her tummy for good luck - I want to have a girl next!

Here's Tyler with our friends Chrissy and Jeffrey. This was when we were leaving and it was SUPER past Tyler's bedtime (notice he's already in his pjs) and he wouldn't take a picture willingly. I don't even know why we have that stroller - when we first got there and got out of the car, we were changing Tyler's diaper in the trunk area and he insisted on riding it. Lazy butt!

And a group picture with the parents to be! I'm so excited for them!! (notice the difference in picture quality - the one above is from my camera, and the one below is Will's.)

Whew, what a day! It was a tough night for Tyler - he woke up twice with night terrors that night - most likely from over tired-ness and overstimulation? Sigh. We really do try to keep a consistent schedule for Tyler, but once in a while, we have to make an exception! On a positive note: the baby shower helped make up my mind that we are totally having Tyler's birthday party at the Pump It Up in Irvine! YAHOO! The best part is, adults are free. Yes. It's because we're old and not considered kids. So all of you guys we invite better come with your socks and be ready to get your bounce on!

The next day we rested and recuperated. :) With Tyler's train obsession, we took him to a nearby park that had trains! He loved driving them!

And crawling through them.

And of course - girl picture of the week! So jealous that Mariam is on summer break from teaching! Lucky!!

Have a good week everyone!