Two, that's the magic number

While Jack has been two in spirit for quite awhile now he actually celebrated his second birthday last Friday. We kept it pretty simple, just the three of us in attendance - 4 if you count Otis and of course we always do. Jack received many fun presents, all of which were enthusiastically played with. Dan and I feel a little sheepish, we didn't get him a thing. I'm pretty sure that he didn't notice, what with the flood of gifts coming in from grandparents, aunts & uncles, great-grandparents, etc. We fixed Jack a special dinner - hot dogs, Tater Tots, fruit salad (with lots of blueberries), and the most delicious chocolate cupcakes. As a special gift to us, he was especially well behaved all day - few no's, only a couple mine's, and nary a tantrum in sight. He has even learned to say "Jack's two." It's kind of hard to believe that I actually have a 2 year old.

Canada Part I: Travelin'

"I will never be one of those parents who has a tv in the car - I can't think of anything more ridiculous!" I said years ago. So, we got the portable DVD player for the car recently. Actually, we got it especially for our trip to Canada. We figured that 7 hours in the plane followed by 7 hours in a car the next day may be a tad more bearable for everyone involved if there was a screen of some sort for Jack to get lost in. Sad to say, it worked like a charm. On our way there we didn't have to deploy our screen until the car ride. The AirCanada plane that we were on had tvs in the back of all the headrests so the Monkey had his very own, touch-screen, monitor with tons of kids shows and movies to keep him entertained. This made our cheap little DVD player a bit less exciting and also prone to destruction as he kept punching at the screen to change the video which of course didn't work and made him frustrated which lead to kicking at the screen which lead to us having to remove it altogether. Overall though, Jack proved once again to be a pretty good little traveler. He liked watching the planes come and go out the airport window and wasn't bothered a bit by the turbulence unlike his white-knuckled mom next to him. He got a little bored and acted out on a few occasions but luckily these were short-lived and pretty understandable given how short on sleep he was.

You Talk Too Much

Well the silence is broken. We officially have a chatterbox on our hands. He is still working on putting phrases and sentences together but it seems like he picks up at least 2 new words a day. We were running errands today and picked up lunch while we were out. On the drive home Dan opened the bag of chips we were going to have with our sandwiches and Jack piped up from the backseat, "Please!" Needless to say we were some proud parents! Of course we think that he thinks that chips are called please but we'll take what we get. He has invented some fun words. He calls pillows "bow" and the phone "Mamie". He also makes almost every word plural so we are asked to "moves". Of course his favorite word is "No" which he uses with startling frequency. And to think we thought it was so cute at first!