Big boy underwear

Jasper got big boy underwear from great uncle Junior and great aunt Sandy Swallow for his birthday.

His mother was FAR more impressed with the little briefs than J was. Zoe Gillespie, left, and Sydney Wilder, right, were also pretty excited.

He hasn't tried them on yet but he's starting to ask to sit on the 'poppy' (potty) so we've been doing that a couple of times a day and we're thinking it might be time soon to start potty training.

Budding photographer

Jasper sees me take enough photos that I'm sure he'll eventually be interested in photography.

Maybe that day is today.

For his birthday he got this Elmo camera that clicks like a real camera and talks - 'Smile for the camera!' and 'You look marvelous!' are just a few of the sayings.

He likes to sit in his new Lightning McQueen chair and play with the camera.

Drawing

Before Jasper's birthday party the other day he and cousin Noah took a few minutes to draw. I think Noah was drawing Southpark cartoon characters. J was coloring jibberish. Both were works of art!

Hey ... Ava!!!

Jasper talks about his friend Ava quite a bit, so tonight we figured we better get it on tape. What's really funny is that Ava — the daughter of Hank and Melissa Norem — have only met once. They played together the night of the most recent Iowa bowl game, took a bath together and Jasper's been head over heels since.

There's a picture of the two of them together, too.

Looks to me like she's a bit smitten as well. You better watch it, Hank. J's got real eyes for her!

He also switches gears and mentions his friend Ella, too, who is the daughter of sitter Alissa.

By the way, don't mind the hair in the photo. We just got done washing hands and sometimes daddy likes to style J's hair.

Birthday bike!!!

Jasper got most of his birthday gifts Sunday at his party, but we saved the big one for today. We thought it'd be torture for him to get his bike this morning then have to leave it at home all day when he was at Alissa's, so we waited until we got home tonight.

It's called a Strider and it's pretty much a miniature bike without pedals.

And it is sweet.

The idea is to help him learn how to ride a bike without having to take his feet off the ground. He can just walk while sitting on the seat and holding onto the handles until he gets good enough to really get going.

It took him all of about 2 seconds to figure it out. Then we rode up the hill and back down to our house before having Jasper's favorite meal — blueberry pancakes!

A quick look back

We've officially celebrated three birthdays with Jasper, including the day he was born, March 24, 2008. Here are photos from each of those days.

My, my ... time sure does fly!!!

Turning 2

Jasper turned two today. Happy birthday big guy!!!

I've still got some birthday party photos from Sunday that I need to get on the blog, but in the meantime here's a couple of shots from him and Nat cuddling the other day.

Birthday party

Jasper turns 2 years old on Wednesday, so we had his birthday party today with a few dozen family and friends at Grandma Vicki's house in Waukee.

It had a John Deere theme, so Natalie ordered a John Deere cake from Hy-Vee and made her own chocolate cupcakes with yellow frosting and John Deere fruit snacks on top. We had a John Deere table cloth, John Deere napkins and, of course, decorated the main table with a few of J's favorite tractors. (It looked really nice ... good job Nat!)

The cake was a hit with everyone - especially J, who blew out his own No. 2 candle. Eventually — back home in his jammies — he got one last taste of the cake by eating the leftover frosting off the wheels of the toy tractor that sat atop the cake.

We want to thank everyone for coming today. You made it a great party; J really enjoyed himself and he got FAR too many gifts.

We'll be sure to post more party pics soon, but for now we've got these two.

Coz in the snow

If you throw snow balls high enough, it seems like Cozmo will fly to catch them.

He'll run back and forth catching — or chasing — snow balls as long as my arm has enough juice in it to keep tossing them. Most days he out-lasts my arm.

Today, he also took a few minutes to play in the snow fort Jasper and I built. Boys will be boys.

Snow fun

While Natalie was at Autumn Swallow's wedding shower Jasper, Cozmo and I took advantage of the sunny weather — and snowy ground — and played outside. You'd be amazed since we've had so much snow, but this is the first snowman of the season. The snow that fell last night — about 5 inches at my house — was absolutely perfect for building a snowman and it rolled up off the grass like you were rolling up carpet.

We did, however, have to put Coz inside for a little while while we rolled up the snow balls. Otherwise he'd dive head-first into the balls and we'd have to start over.

J wasn't thrilled with me stealing his blue chalk for the snowman's eyes, but after the photos we went back to drawing on the patio. And he was a little iffy about sitting so high up, but he thought it was fun — for a second.

2010 Altoona Hy-Vee Easter egg hunt

This is the second year we went to the Altoona Hy-Vee Easter egg hunt. Last year it was cold and windy. This year there was about 4-5 inches of snow on the ground.

The Hy-Vee staff did a great job clearing the snow from a patio out back and, by the time the egg hunt was on, the patio was pretty much dry. They spread out everything from plastic eggs with prizes inside to little cartons of milk, pencils, frozen pizzas - and of course candy!

Jasper wasn't all that interested in most of the prizes. He came home with a little matchbox car, a squishy football and a balloon - simple treasures for our boy!

And, of course, we couldn't leave without meeting the Easter bunny. I was a little nervous about it since he didn't care much for Santa Claus and Frosty the Snowman during Christmas, but he walked right up to the bunny, gave him 5 and hopped right up on his lap for photos. (Little bugger wouldn't look at his dad, though ... he kept his eyes on the Hy-Vee gals taking his photo instead.)

On a side note, he must've been excited for the egg hunt because he was awake by 6 a.m. this morning. Normally he sleeps until about 7:30, so by the time the egg hunt was over he was wrecked. And 5 minutes into our car ride home, he was O-U-T ... OUT!

Weee-oooo, weeeee-oooo, weeeee-oooo

Jasper liked the Easter egg hunt today, but he LOVED the big, heavy fire truck. I say 'heavy' because that's what he calls pretty much everything big. It's not necessarily about the weight, it's just the size - anything large is 'heavy' in J's eyes.

And yes, he did charm the fire lady.

Weee-oooo, weeeee-oooo, weeeee-oooo

BOYS!

I thought this was such a cute picture! We are teaching Jman how to wash his hands in the sink after meals, etc. This was a lazy weekend morning where daddy and jman were just hanging with their shirts off. Daddy was washing Jasper's hands in the sink and i loved how high Jasper's diaper was on his back, just thought it was funny and wanted to post!

Sleepover With "cidnee"

Jasper's cousin, Sydney, come over for a sleepover a couple weeks ago. we had a great time - went swimming at the Altoona Campus, ate lasagna, made blueberry pancakes in the morning (Jman's favorite) and made some sugar cookies, too. And, of course, Jasper and Syd's favorite thing to do - READ. Syd is getting good at reading and can now read books to Jasper. She would tuck him into his chair or bed and they would sit while she would read and he listened. We also built a tower of blocks that was as tall as Syd (Jman was in bed at this time, so that is part of the reason why it wasn't knocked down prior to this point!) It was a great sleepover! Jasper is so lucky to have great cousins!

Double Bubba

Jasper LOVES his blankets, or better known as 'blue bubba' and 'white bubba.' Usually we'll ask him which bubba he wants to take with him when he goes on sleepovers with the grandparents or goes to Issa's house (daycare lady). His answer was always 'white bubba' for about a month and luckily, we finally got blue bubba in the rotation so white bubba could be washed!! This morning, he was loving them both, so we called it, 'double bubba!' he was also very fascinated with Barney on TV, which explains the very engrossed look on his face.

Off to Work!

Jasper likes to pretend he's going "off to work." He will take Adam's computer bag, which is quite heavy and almost as big as he is, and drag it to the garage door, where he'll proceed to say, 'bye mommy!' And then he'll come back into the living room and say, 'hi mommy' where i'll then ask him how his day was at work...'good,' he'll say!

Bronco fans ...

We threw in our Denver Broncos T-shirts for the shoot and got a couple of good snapshots to document our (my) effort to brainwash Jasper into being a Broncos fan. It's going well so far.

LeAnn had a Hawkeye stocking cap, too, so we just had to get a few of him in that, too.

Nice shoes!

Look closely and you'll notice something is a little 'off' about Jasper's shoes. Yes, for most of the photo shoot he wore his kicks on the wrong feet.

Thanks Mommy!!!

Picture day

We got Jasper's 2-year photos taken Feb. 27 at Tucker Photography in Winterset. (He turns 2 March 24 ... yeah, we can't believe it either!!!)

LeAnn was friendly and easy to work with and did a nice job photographing Jasper. He wasn't all that smiley that day and he was pretty interested in her Elmo doll and other props, but we got him to cooperate long enough for some good shots. Natalie and I even jumped in for a few, which seemed to turn out good, too.

Here's a few.

And yes, we know his hair's a little unruly, but there's not much we can do with it at this point. It sticks up when it wants to stick up and lays down when it wants to lay down. The left side of his hair wanted to stick up that day.

We'll post more soon and, of course, try to get prints to anyone who might one them.