Lili's party

One of Simon's PEPS friends, Lili, was born on the same day he was. She had a birthday party this afternoon and we had a great time. Simon has a little crush on Lili, so he was talking about going to see her all weekend!

here are two quick videos: One of Simon and Lili playing together in the kiddie pool and one briefly showing Simon's new talent for blowing bubbles in the water!

Videos

We have a couple of videos to catch up on...

Simon playing with his new kitchen:

And getting buried in sand by Dad:

Birthday!

We had a low-key but fun birthday for Simon yesterday. He went to daycare as usual, and there they sang him Happy Birthday at circle time and played some of his favorite games. Aunt Karyn came up to celebrate with us and she helped us get ready at home with a cool truck cake and streamers. When he got home, his new kitchen set from Grandma and Papa was set up and ready to play. We had pizza, his favorite, for dinner and then he dug into his cake. He even blew out most of his candles by himself!

Here are some pictures and a video of the big cake moment!

2 years old!

Simon turned two years old yesterday! I can't believe how big he is--what a difference from 1 year old. It's been another fun month, with lots of time spent outside. We've been to the wading pool, played with water toys out back, spent lots of time at the playground...

We did have a bit of a transition in our daily routine--Matt started his new job and needs to be there at 7, so I took over the morning routine and dropoff. Simon also transitioned to the Kangaroo room at school, and with all the change, we've been having some teary dropoffs at daycare. It's so hard to leave him there when he's crying for me, but one of his teachers is always there to hold him. And of course I hide out in the hallway and he's always done crying within a minute or so. Otherwise he is still loving it there and they adore him, which is great.

Simon's language is definitely developing, he has a pretty wide vocabulary and is starting to put two and three words together. He can name about 8 colors on his own, and is starting to play pretend more and more.

Overall, it's been an amazing year with an amazing boy! Here are a few pictures from the month, I'll post separately about his actual birthday.

Family band

Simon took a break from getting ready for bed tonight by accompanying me on the guitar as I sang "She'll be coming Round the Mountain". His technique could use a little work, but he definitely has the cool factor of a lead guitarist down--and the shirtless-ness, of course.

Belly then and now

They say that your belly gets bigger faster with your second pregnancy...man, am I proof of that. There is almost no weight difference between this pregnancy and the last and the baby is measuring very average, but the belly is a totally different story!

Here's a picture at about week 22 with this pregnancy:

Compare that to a picture from my first pregnancy when I was 3 weeks further along, at 25 weeks!

Now here's today, at almost 27 weeks:

Doesn't look that far off from week 36 of my pregnancy with Simon!

I'm in for it!

Early birthday gifts

Simon doesn't turn 2 for a couple more weeks, but he got two early presents this weekend!

First, Aunt Karyn sent a great water table, and he loves it!

And because he is obsessed with guitars, we bought him a ukelele (AKA a Simon-sized guitar) and he is totally into it.

Jumping (again)

Surprisingly, a big physical milestone for toddlers is the ability to jump...looks like Simon has it down!