Circus Time!

We took Kade to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus tonight. It was so much fun! Kade absolutely loved it. Here he is watching the circus with Daddy.

Mommy & Kade having fun at the circus. He was so interested in what was going on, we couldn't get him to look at the camera.

Kade got a snow cone in an elephant cup. He really loved the cup. It's his "ephant"! He also got popcorn and cotton candy. You can't go to the circus without getting all that good stuff!

Kade had such a great time! His favorite things were the elephants and the motorcyle riders in the round cage. When we got home I asked him what his favorites were, and he said bubbles and sing. There was a clown who was blowing bubbles. He's obsessed with bubbles! And sing is music. I thought that was pretty funny!

I was finally able to get a picture of him with his circus hat. He hates hats and won't keep them on his head. So that was a challenge! We're so glad we got to take him to the circus. It was so fun for Mommy & Daddy too! We were on the 4th row, so our seats were amazing. We will definitely go back next year.

Kade at his first Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. Notice he says "eat, eat" at the end of the video. He's already thinking about the food!

This one's a little dark, but you can hear how excited he was!

Goodbye Binky

Oh, the orneriness!

The binkie is officially gone! We had decided we were going to make Kade give it up when he turned 2. So he turned 2, and we were going to wean him off of it. We only allowed him to have it at nap time and bed time. That was going fine. So then we decided it was about time to get rid of it altogether. Well Kade had begun to bite the ends off of them, so we were down to 1 more binky left. Once they were gone we weren't buying anymore. But today Kade was supposed to be down for his nap, and he started crying and wouldn't stop. So Jake went in to check on him, and he was sitting in the floor of his room beside the vent and crying binky. He has learned how to take the vent covers off and dropped the binky down the opening. So we just told him binky was gone forever and we couldn't get it back. That answer worked for him, and now we are binky free!

Kade Blowing Out Candles

Kade had a birthday party at my dad's house tonight. It was a monkey themed party. He absolutely loves monkeys! Here he is blowing out his birthday candles. He did a really good job.

We didn't even have to tell him to blow them out. He just automatically did it!

Swinging & Sliding

We took Kade to the city park this evening to play, and he wanted to swing. Here are a few pics of him having fun swinging while Daddy was pushing him.

He kept saying "Whee" over and over again! It was so cute.

Kade's peeking at the camera around Daddy's arm.

I can't get over how big he is getting. And he looks exactly like me in this picture when I was that age!

Kade pointing at the train tracks and saying choo-choo. He wanted a train to come by so bad while we were there.

Kade loves to slide! Here is a quick video of him climbing up the slide and coming down while we were playing at the park. We almost couldn't pull him away from that slide once he started sliding. He cried when we had to go home.

Choo-Choo

Kade got a new Thomas the Train for his birthday. He absolutely loves trains right now! Every time we see a train he points at it and says choo-choo! Then when we get past it, he says bye choo-choo. Here he is playing with his new train.

Happy Birthday Kade!

Today Kade turned 2! We had his birthday party this afternoon at Aunt Nancy's pool house. Here he is eating cake and ice cream with Daddy.

What a happy birthday boy, playing with his balloon!

Here's a new family picture.

Mommy and Kade right before opening presents. Kade's favorite part was eating that sucker!

Kade had a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse birthday party. Here he is showing off his new birthday shirt and Daddy's mouse ears. Isn't he just too cute!!

Kade's Birthday Cake

Here are pictures of Kade's birthday cake. My friend, Amanda Shipley, made the cake. Isn't it super cute? I asked her to make a cake that went along with the theme of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and she actually made the clubhouse.

It was just the perfect cake!!

ABC's

Kade will now almost repeat everything that we say. Here he is showing off his ABC skills. He absolutely loves letters. When he sees any letters he always say "A" or "E", no matter what the letter is. So I'm glad that he is recognizing that they are the ABC's! I can't get him to be still for 5 seconds, so these videos are hard to get. Hopefully you can understand him!

Here he is showing off his new jeans and tennis shoes.

Handsome Fireman

Here Kade is showing off his new fireman hat from Aunt Holly. She works as the dispatcher for the fire department, so it's only fitting that she got Kade the fireman hat. Most of the time he won't keep a hat on his head for more than a couple seconds, but I convinced him to do it for the picture. Doesn't he look so big in this picture? He'll be 2 in less than 2 weeks!

Kade's Favorite Song

Kade's favorite song is "Please Don't Stop the Music" by Rhianna. Here he is dancing to it. He loves to dance! Sorry the video is sideways. I didn't know how to rotate it.

Our Little Acrobat

Here Kade is showing me how he can do a somersault on the floor. You'll also hear that he is really good at whining!!

Kade Can Snore

The other night Kade crawled up on the couch, layed down, and said night night. Then he started snoring. I don't know where he learned this, but here I caught a quick video of him snoring. He wasn't cooperating too well, but I think you can hear him.

Mark's Wedding

Jake was in his friend Mark Stacy's wedding over the weekend, and it was at the zoo. So that worked out real well for Kade and me. It gave us something to do while we were waiting on Jake to do the rehearsal. Here we are on the way to the rehearsal Saturday afternoon.

Kade and I sat in chairs on the end of the row so we could see Jake walk down the aisle. I wanted to make sure that Kade was able to see him. He definitely saw him. As soon as Jake started walking down the aisle, Kade started yelling Daddy! And then in the middle of the ceremony Kade hollered out "Hi Daddy" when it was quiet. So everyone heard him and started laughing! It was funny. Here's a picture of Daddy and Kade right after the ceremony. Kade didn't like the wedding music that was being played over the speakers, so he was scared to take his hands off his ears the whole rest of the night.

Here's our family after the wedding. Kade wasn't too happy because I made him take his hands off his ears for the picture. That's why he's making such a bad face!

Here's Mommy & Kade after the ceremony. He still wasn't too happy, but I almost got him to smile!

Once the wedding was over, while the wedding party was taking pictures, I took Kade around the zoo. He cheered up rather quickly, as you can see from the above picture! At first he wouldn't get on the turtle, but once I coaxed him onto it he loved it! It was really neat to get to have the zoo pretty much to ourselves. We were able to do things we wouldn't normally get to do, like walk down the railroad tracks and go off the beaten path. We didn't have time to go everywhere since it was starting to get dark, but we were able to see several animals, and I even got Kade to say giraffe!

Big Boy Bed

Last night we decided to change Kade's crib into a toddler bed since he kept climbing out of it. We were afraid he would get hurt. Here he is enjoying climbing in and out of his bed all by himself.

He likes his big boy bed, but he hasn't slept in it yet. Last night after I put him down for bed and left the room he immediately came to the door and started knocking on it and yelling Momma! Then he only cried for a few minutes before he fell asleep, but he slept in the floor all night long. Then today for his nap he did the same. I guess it will just take him some time to get used to staying in his bed. Hopefully he'll figure it out soon!

Here he is showing some of those climbing skills. He can't climb over the baby gates yet, but I'm sure it won't take him long to figure that one out too!

Zoo Trip

Today we took a trip to the Tulsa Zoo with our friends Chad & Noel and their daughters Araya & Kaya. Kade had a great time, and the weather was awesome. It was only about 85 degrees and was cloudy the whole time, so we didn't have to worry about it being too hot. It did sprinkle on us a little, but nothing to complain about. Here is Araya & Kade visiting the Rainforest exhibit, right before we got "chased" by bats.

I was able to catch a quick picture of Daddy & Kade while they were watching some fish.

Our monkey family

Here Kade was looking at the monkeys. They were by far his favorite. He actually cried when we left them because he didn't understand there would be more monkeys and lots of other animals to see. There were 2 baby monkeys, and he kept pointing at them and saying baby.

Here is Mommy & Kade standing by the shiny penguin that we had our picture taken by last summer. Too bad Kade is giving a look instead of smiling. He's really good at those! Kade liked the zoo and enjoyed all the animals except for the elephants, jaguars, and penguins. He still doesn't understand the whole behind glass thing and was scared when they came up to it. I understand being scared of the elephants and jaguars since they're pretty big, but I still can't figure out what's so scary about penguins!

My Little Monkey

Here are a few pictures of Kade relaxing on his couch while "sharing" a shake with Mommy & Daddy.

Here's one of his famous looks that he loves to give!

Another shake picture

He can now do somersaults, even on command. I told him to do a somersault so I could take a picture of him, and he just ran over and did it.

Doesn't he just look so innocent?

So Kade has decided to take after his daddy's climbing abilities. When Jake was young, he climbed on everything, and now Kade is doing the same thing. He isn't afraid to get on anything or to even jump off of it. Today while he was supposed to be napping I went outside to feed our dogs. When I came back inside I heard Kade's voice say Momma, and he was standing right there. He had climbed up the rails of his crib, jumped off the top, opened his bedroom door and made it to the living room and was looking for me. I was actually amazed that he had done all that. He did climb out of his crib 2 weeks ago but hadn't tried it since. I think we're going to have to change his crib to a toddler bed real soon! He also decided to move Boomer's pet taxi over to one of the kitchen cabinets so he could climb up on it to reach the can opener. And he tried to climb between the refrigerator and wall and got his head stuck on the way out. It never ends with him, and that all happened today! I have to say our life is never boring!!

First Trip to the ER

So this morning Jake and I were getting ready to go to my cousin's birthday party. While we were getting ready Kade was going back and forth between our bedroom and the living room. Jake saw that Kade had grabbed something out of our room and ran off with it, so he assumed it was something he wasn't supposed to have. He told Kade to show Mommy what he had found. So Kade brought a round battery to me that was a spare for one of his toys. I told him we needed to go put it away and took him to back in our room and watched him put it down. The next thing we knew Kade was standing next to Jake saying Dadda and pointing at his mouth. Then he gulped, started crying, and kind of gasped a little. Jake told me that Kade had swallowed something and wondered what it was. I immediately knew it was that battery. After Kade calmed down a bit he seemed to be fine but occasionally would point at his chest or mouth. We decided to go ahead and take him to the ER to make sure it hadn't gotten stuck anywhere or that battery acid couldn't get into his system. Once at the ER they took Kade's vitals, which were fine, and then sent us for x-rays. The battery was already in his stomach, which is good. We finally got to see the doctor, and she told us there was nothing to worry about. She said newer batteries are sealed, so the acid couldn't leak out, and we'd just have to wait for him to pass it. She told us it would probably take between 1-5 days for him to pass it. We only need to go back and get him checked if he complains of any stomach pain. But so far he is himself, and it hasn't slowed him down a bit. So we are very grateful that it turned out to be no big deal!

Here's an idea of what the battery looked like that he swallowed. It was between the size of a nickel and quarter but was thicker.

Bounce U

Today a group of us moms from church went to Bounce U in Tulsa. It has a lot of inflatables that kids can jump in, play in, slide down, etc. It was a lot of fun, except that Kade was scared most of the time and would hardly do anything but just cover his ears. They had some kind of loud music playing, so that scared him immediately, and he never could quite get over that.

But he started to enjoy himself a little while after we had been there. Here he was playing with a little girl through the netting. She would put her face up to it, and he would try and poke her. :)

He finally took his hands off his ears and decided to have a little fun! He still wouldn't go into any of the inflatables though.

This is my absolute favorite picture from today! He climbed into that car all by himself and just sat down. I thought it was hilarious how his head is barely sticking out of the car! He loved playing in that car. That kept him busy for quite a while.

Here Kade and I are sliding down the biggest slide. I thought it was a lot of fun, but Kade didn't like it one bit. This was when we first got there, and he hadn't decided if he was going to like this place yet or not. After we left I asked Kade if he liked playing there, and he said "uh huh." Then I asked him if he wanted to go back, and he said "uh huh." So I guess we'll try going again when he gets a little bigger. Hopefully he won't be scared then!

Wild Wilderness Safari

Today we took Kade to the Wild Wilderness Drive Through Safari in Gentry, AR. We had a lot of fun! Here Kade is in the petting zoo watching the baby pygmy goat.

We're still in the petting zoo, and Kade is "hugging" the kangaroo.

Here we are at the walk through part of the safari, and Kade and Daddy are watching the zebra. Kade really liked the zebras.

Here we are petting a baby tiger at the walk through safari. It was so neat!

Kade got to help drive while we were going through the Wilderness Safari. He really liked seeing all the different animals. They really have a lot. He especially liked all the monkeys! We definitely had a fun afternoon. We will have to go back again next year!