buzzed

We have had a lot of fun company lately. Our niece Mary was here for a week and than her sister Erin came this weekend. Oliver loved it. He would stand at the bottom of the stairs and call " Air-in; Mare-ee". When they drove away on Sunday he turned to Anthony and I and said "I"m sad. I want them to come back NOW."

He had already been sad over the weekend. Part of me was glad that it was no longer our fault.

Oliver is usually a very laid back kid. He has never had a problem going to the doctor or having his hair cut. For some reason the last time I took him to get his hair cut he freaked out. Two minutes into it he stopped cooperating. He buried his head into me. His hair was only cut because I held his head up. He was a mess and I felt terrible about it.

Saturday morning we were both saying Oliver needed his hair cut. Anthony said that he could do it. In college he shaved the hair of everyone on the floor. I should have remembered the awful incident where poor Kevin got a cut and the only hair that remained were his initials, KOD.

I figured Oliver would perfer to have his hair cut by Anthony. It started out ok. Anthony cut it into a cute Mohawk ala Maddix. Shortly after that Oliver was not happy. He started crying, but it was done before we knew it.

He was still screaming as I brought him into the bathroom. Anthony and I immediately told him how good he looked. At this point Oliver wouldn't even look at Anthony. He was so mad. Mary tried to talk to him about it. Eventually he went up to Mary and said "Daddy cut my hair off. I look different." She was so good with him. She reminded him of a Yo gabba gabba episode we watched about kids being different. He didn't buy into it. Erin tried too.

Eventually I asked him what was wrong. He said "I'm mad at Daddy for cutting my hair off.". I told him it will grow back, but he said "No. It's on the deck." The poor thing. He hates his hair. Through the weekend he kept talking about how different he looked. That night when we were putting him into bed he told us he wanted his hair back. I told him it would grow back and he asked me if we could get him new hair tomorrow.

Oliver really was so funny and sad at the same time. By Sunday he was kind of getting use to it. When he saw Andrea for the first time he told her he was happy now about his hair because I told him it would grow back. But on Monday again he told me he wanted his old hair back. He wanted to know when it would be back and if it would be really really long.

It is a big change. It might have been a little too short on Saturday, but now it looks nice. If anyone sees him you have to tell him his hair looks good. Anything less and he turns to me with this intense "what did you do to me" look.

It's funny because he is still so young, but at the same time not. He always has opinions. I was surprised by how much this meant to him. I really shouldn't have been. In the winter I moved a painting that was right in front of his play table and he told me he wanted the picture back where he could see it. I guess I just still assume that he'll go along with what we want.

Obviously I'll attach pictures. I don't have any good ones because he was so uncooperative about taking a picture. He really looks so handsome and older with his new hair cut. We love it.

summer

Today has been one of those perfect summer days. The sky is bright blue and there is a warm breeze. I wish every summer day could be like this. It has been so hot here. This weekend it will be back up to 90. My sister in law JoEllen says that she tries not to complain about the weather in the summer because she complains so much about the cold in the winter. I'm usually the same way. I hardly ever put the a/c on. But this summer seems hotter.

Luckily, our town pool opened full time this week. Oliver loves going there. I forgot how easy our days our in the summer. Everything is more relaxed.

I can't believe that it was a year ago that we were at the pool. This year flew by. There were some babies at the pool today. Seeing them next to Oliver was funny. He looked big. He can go into the big pool this year since he is potty trained. They won't let him wear any swimmies in the big pool which means I have to go in with him the whole time. Right now he is happier at the baby pool. I hope it lasts.

Last night Oliver and I were outside as the sun was starting to set. Oliver came running over to me and he looked very upset. When I asked him what was wrong he said he couldn't find his shadow anywhere. I took him to a spot with some sun and he was very happy. He asked me if I could take a picture of his shadow so that he could always see it. So I did.

I hope everyone has a fun Fourth of July.

yoga and fishing

rambling

So far June has been a big month. Oliver turned two and half, our niece Andrea is staying with us while she works in NYC, and our town pool opened.

It is great having Andrea here. Oliver loves it. The other day Andrea got Oliver dressed for bed and she put him in a purple t-shirt. The next morning when I was changing him he did not want to take off the shirt because it was Andrea's favorite. Eventually I got him to change. But that night when Andrea got home and was wearing a purple shirt Oliver insisted on putting the purple shirt on so they could match.

He likes to watch as Andrea does her Wii Fit. One day he was asking to watch Andrea's show with the hoop dee hoop. Andrea finally realized he wanted to watch her do this hula hoop thing on the Wii. Now he has started to do yoga with her. I can't believe how much he pays attention to it. He'll watch the screen and try to move his body to match it. After each pose he'll say "that was easy".

He has been copying everything we say for awhile, but luckily he hasn't picked up any bad words. We all try to be careful, but some slip through. The other day Anthony bought life jackets for all of us for his canoe. He got a small one for Oliver. We put it on him and he immediately wanted to take it off because as he said "this one sucks. I want the big one." Oops.

So far Oliver's twos are going really well. We have hardly (fingers crossed) had any tantrums. The big difficult thing he does is to be completely contrary. His response to everything is "No" even if it is a good thing like ice cream. He'll catch it and change to yes. If we are outside he wants to be inside and vice versa. It gets old fast so hopefully he'll outgrow it fast.

The other thing is when he wants something he wants it NOW. I've been telling him a lot he needs to be more patient and his has to wait. On Saturday I was sitting outside reading. Oliver opened the front door, poked his head out, and yelled to me "Mommy can you get me some patience?" I told to ask his father for some. I heard him ask Anthony for some patience, but Anthony misunderstood him and thought he was asking for some pigeons. I tried to explain to Oliver what patience meant and he quickly told me he didn't want any after all.

Besides being a very poor blogger (I'm a great blogger late at night in my head.) I've been very lax on my picture taking. We took a ton of pictures over Memorial day weekend, but I still haven't gone threw them all. I need to be better about that too. If only I had some more time.

fun and silly weekend

catching up

I'm not sure where March went. For the most part the weather was great and we were busy playing outside or at the park. Oliver is getting big. We started working on potty training and he is doing great with it. He finally seems like he is eating better too. He'll at least try new things. Lately he loves to say to me "Mommy try this. You'll like it." After I try it and say I liked it he'll say "I told you."

He is really growing up. The other day while I was changing him I told him that he is getting so big. Oliver told me that is because he is growing up. Later that day he opened the refrigerator and said he wanted something. I asked him what he wanted and he said wine. I told him he wasn't old enough for wine and he said to me "but Mommy I'm growing up".

We visited a friend this week who is pregnant. She is out of her first trimester and finally feeling a lot better. She said to me several times that she was happy that she has her energy back. In the car on the way home Oliver said to me "Mommy. I finally have my energy back". I thought maybe I heard him wrong so I asked his to say it again and sure enough that is what he said. I didn't even think he was listening to us.

It is funny hearing him use those grown up phrases. There are probably twenty more silly stories that I could tell about things Oliver is saying. It seems like all day he comes up with one funny thing after the other.

funny stuff

Yesterday all day Oliver was walking around saying the funniest things. I kept saying to myself I'm going to write it down on the blog because it is so nice to have a place to record these memories. I know how I've been. If I don't write it down here in a month or sooner it's completely gone. My plan was to do it when he napped. But that didn't happen. I've been so tired lately. This weather is just killing me. I'm so sick of it. I have so little motivation. I really need to make myself snap out of it. Instead of writing everything down I read in bed. Oh well.

So this morning I'm doing it. As it is I forget most of yesterday. My days are pretty similar.

Oliver goes a mile a minute. He is always saying something. Right until he falls asleep he is talking to the animals in his crib. I heard him telling his monkey that he could have a banana after he woke up in the morning. I think that is in response to me just telling him that he couldn't have cookies in his crib that he could have cookies after breakfast.

Yesterday morning he kept going up to one of our cats and putting his hand on her back while saying "so what's the problem?" He kept asking her over and over again while bringing her different things to play with to see if that made her feel better. I realized that I say that exact phrase to him, but not exactly that same way. He was saying it so sweetly. I say it much more exasperated.

We are at the point with him where you have to watch everything you say. He repeats everything back. We were goofing around with his stuffed monkeys, Curious George and Monk. I took George and asked him what his name was. We've been working on Oliver's full name so I thought he would say "George Licata or more like George Cata". No. Instead he said "George Bush". Which is really funny and a little strange because we don't talk about politics much at all. I'm not saying we don't know anything about what is going on in the world, but it's rare for us to be talking about politics. But we did spend the weekend with Mae and Joe who do talk a lot of politics. They even babysat while we went to the movie's. We saw Crazy/Heart. It was amazing. I think while we were gone they went over some things with Oliver. Either them or Gretchen Carlson. :)

We had such a great visit with Mae and Joe. Oliver loved seeing everyone. I'm glad we are coming in again soon.

As I said earlier I've been pretty lazy and uninpsired so I haven't taken any new photos of Oliver this week. How many pictures can we have of him in his snowsuit? I do have pictures from the weekend, but I haven't downloaded them yet. But that is on my list to do later. I'll post some pictures later.