2nd Birthday - Eli Visits

Eli, the ORU mascot, stopped by the party for a little bit. 

Beckett love this and they even got to do the Cha-Cha slide. 

"Goodbye, Eli" 

2nd Birthday - Cake Time

Beckett is obsessed with basketball this year, mainly because our whole family has lived and breathed basketball for the last five months! So we went with a basketball theme for his party. 

We made him a "spit cake" because I didn't trust him to not slobber all over the real cake when he blew out the candle. He actually surprised us all with a clean blow! 

We quickly decided to undress him after we saw how messy the orange icing was going to be. Unfortunately, I forgot to take off his shoes, so his new shoes are sprinkled with orange. Oh well.

Here's a super short video of Beckett blowing out his candle. I'm not sure why I didn't record longer.

Easter Festivities

We decided to give Beckett his Easter basket the night before Easter since we knew that Sunday would be such a busy day. We also wanted him to be able to play with his new outdoor toys on the beautiful Saturday afternoon that we had. 

Here are a few pictures from our church Easter egg hunt. I'm embarrassed to admit that I ate at least half of his Easter candy during church while he was in the nursery. I like to think that I was just protecting his health.  

Blake's Aunt Marla and Uncle Gary invited us over for lunch after church. Marla prepared a wonderful meal and we were able to see some other family members that we do not get to see very often. Beckett had such a wonderful time with his cousins! I'd say that they all spoil him quite a bit!

This is my favorite picture It looks like Beckett is
eyeing Cameron's eggs, debating on whether or not to
 take them out of her basket and put them into his.

Snow! Snow! Snow!

We had our first "big" Tulsa snow in mid-February. This was Beckett's first time playing in the snow. He absolutely loved it and I had to force him to come inside. Thankfully, the snow was gone after two days and didn't cause much inconvenience.

 

Happy 22/23 Months!

What have you been up to?

Wow, I can’t believe that you are less than two weeks away from 2 years old! 

Counting – You can count to 10 when you want to. Sometimes you take the lazy route and skip a few numbers, usually the number 1. You like to start with the number 2, which throws all of your counting off by +1.

Working on our alphabet with these cool foam
bath letters that our friends Katie and Reid gave you.

ABC’s – We have been working on your alphabet. You have been interested in letters and “reading” for a quite a while and like to point letters out, especially in restaurants and on billboards. So, I figured if you were going to “read” everywhere we go, I might as well teach you the correct letters. You’re doing really well with your alphabet and can recognize almost every letter. Your favorite letters are W and Q. Sometimes you call Z's zebras because I always say "Z is for zebra" and now you think that is the actual name of the letter. Oops.

All of a sudden, you love to play with your stuffed animals. You don’t have many, but you have a giraffe and elephant (thanks to Ashley and Coach Goodenough) that you sleep with at night. When you wake up in the morning, you like to tuck them in before leaving your room. You lay them both on the pillow, cover them with a blanket, and put your paci in their mouths. Every once in a while, I catch you saying “amen” with them because we pray with you before bed. How sweet is that? Then, you proceed to run and tackle them while they are sleeping (which I have never done, by the way).

You LOVE to dance and often chant “deence, deence” (dance, dance), so that we’ll turn on some dance music. You love to do the Cha-Cha slide and really any other dance. You just started shaking your booty which is hilarious!

Wasting time while waiting on Kaki and Grandaddy at the airport.

You really love to sing and read. Grandma and Kaki have taught you a lot of new songs and we have been to the library several times for reading and music time. You really like story time at the library because they blow bubbles and give you stickers.

This little shirt has traumatized you. The first time you saw it in the
bookstore, you pointed to it, stuck out your bottom lip with tears
 filling your eyes and said "Eli broke" in the most pitiful voice. 

You really enjoyed the ORU basketball games this season and are sad that the season is almost over. Towards the end of the season, I started taking you to the double-headers (both men’s and women’s games) and you were a champ. You sat and entertained yourself better than most adults do through two whole games (about 5 hours of basketball).

I love how he watches the games with such intensity.

You have an unhealthy obsession with the ORU mascot, Eli. You wake up talking about Eli and go to bed talking about Eli. When I take you to the games a lot of Daddy's friends try to talk to you, but all you will say to them is "Eyi" over and over while pointing to an Eli on the wall or in the gym.

At the last two ball games, I decided to try to get a picture of Beckett and Eli. The first one
 (the one on the right) didn't turn out very well. Eli picked him up and I don't think that
 he was prepared for that. As for the other two, I couldn't get him to look at the camera.
There's always next year...

You are really talking and will repeat any words you hear. Daddy and I love it when you say “pumpkins” because you call them “punkys”. You have some pajama pants that have pumpkins on them that you call your “punky pants”. Your favorite words right now are "no yet" (not yet) which I hear several times a day. You have learned so many new words lately and always surprise me by using words that I didn't know you knew. I am not sure where you are picking up this large vocabulary, but it is a bit frightening!

Someone figured out to how unzip his pajamas.

You really like to help out around the house with chores. You like to help sweep, vacuum, dust and do laundry. Sometimes you like to dump out all of your toys and say “uh oh, mess”, and then you usually pick it all up and it put it back where it belongs.

As soon as he realized the OSU Cowboys were on tv, he ran over to
 hug the tv. Where does he get this stuff from?

I have found myself saying "not so loud" over and over throughout the day. I'm not sure what happened, but all of a sudden you are so loud all of the time. You talk loud, laugh loud, and play loud, and seem to be the loudest when we are out in public. If we go shopping, I'm constantly saying "not so loud" which works for about two seconds. I'm hoping that you outgrow this at some point. If not, I'm getting your ears checked!

You are still measuring a big boy. You are wearing 2T and 3T clothes, and we just bought you some size 7 tennis shoes (WIDE, of course, for those chubby feet). You are weighing in at a solid 29 pounds these days. 

New Basketball Goal

Beckett got a new basketball goal for Christmas. He absolutely loves it and has played with it every single day since he got it. We have a bet going on as to which of the three of us will break something with the basketball first. I'm betting that it won't be the little one.

We brought the ball out first and he immediately tried to
shoot it into his little basketball goal.
He was disappointed when it didn't fit. 

His face lit up when Daddy brought out the new goal.

 

Daddy is already giving lessons :) 

Valentine's Day

Since Blake has had to work every Valentine's Day since we've met, I've decided to make sharing Krispy Kreme heart-shaped doughnuts a tradition with my little Valentine. Last year, Blake was out of town, but this year we decided to go during lunch so that Blake could go with us before the basketball game started that evening. Who doesn't love a good reason to eat Krispy Kreme doughnuts?

Last year vs. this year