Just Keep Swimmin: {Independence Day Post #2}

Day two of our Independence Day weekend involved spending time with friends, lots of swimming, more watermelon and a few emotional breakdowns.

We started our day around 10:00 (yeah, I love having a toddler who will sleep in) and went to my Aunts pool and swam till our hearts were content.

We love swimming. Its so refreshing when living in the nasty heat and humidity that Georgia has to offer. Blah.

While at the pool, Zachariah showed Daddy how he can hold his breath and put his face in the water. (He is very proud of that)

He also showed us how to properly inflate his swimmies.

Or floaties. Or floties, which is apparently how it is spelled on the product we own. I don't know what they are supposed to be called. Regardless, they keep him afloat. You get the idea.

He doesn't mess around. He is pretty serious about getting these things blown up correctly. I mean, they are the ONLY thing that keeps him from going under. They are his life support when in the water.


That and his inner tube that he insists on using. Because he secretly does NOT trust the floties.

Or swimmies.

Whatever.


Here are my two boys. Zachariah was giving daddy kisses after he preformed some amazing swan dives off the diving board. (I am pretty much in love with this picture.)

After a tiring morning of swimming, we came home, ate lunch, and took a nap. Well, Daniel and Zachariah took a nap. I was looking through all the pictures I had taken. :)

After we re-energized ourselves, we went over to our friends house for some scrumptious steaks. Mmm. Steaks. I love steaks. I wish I had taken a picture of those honkin steaks.

Anyway. Meet Tim and Nan. (Also known as The T-I-M and Nanny-poo.) They cooked some good food for us.


And this is their puppy Brady. (Tim, I know you never comment on my blog, but feel free to correct the spelling of your dogs name if I got it wrong.) Brady is a cutie patootie, but Zachariah was NOT a fan. Like, he wouldn't let me set him down once he knew the dog was in the house to stay. It was ridiculous. But he eventually got over it and even touched the dog before the evening was over!


And of course we ate more watermelon. Well, Daniel, Tim and Zachariah ate watermelon. Nan and I ate a yummy apple pie. *cue salivation glands*

Oh crap. I am drooling all over my keyboard. How embarrassing.

So yeah. All in all, it was a great day. But not the end of our celebrations! So stay tuned for more. :)


Oh, and because I love this picture so much...

Gah. His eyes melt me.

New Header and Book Review Thursday

Hello! Before we get to the book review, I just wanted to let everyone know that I have changed a few things around here. My fabulous hubby designed a new header for me, and I have changed from Randomnimity to That's What She Said. (hee hee) I will also be getting a new layout here soon. So don't be alarmed. Its still me. :)

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Now for our regularly scheduled program.

Today is Thursday. Which means I do a book review on a toddler book. Fun huh? :)

This week's book happens to be one of my favorites.

Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs! by Sandra Boynton. I LOVE Sandra Boynton. I have yet to read a book of hers that I don't like. I am not saying it wont happen, but so far I love everything I have read.

This is one of the few books that I don't mind reading over and over and over again. (Lets face it. Toddlers like repetition) The cute and colorful pages make it entertaining for him, and the clever rhymes make it enjoyable for me.

Here is one of Zachariah's favorite pages. He LOVES to pretend he is cold and hot. He pretty much has motions or actions for each page though. And as usual, its adorable to watch him as we read the book. :)

This is his other favorite page. He likes for Daddy to sing this page to him. Then when Daddy isn't home, mommy makes fun of Daddy singing this page. Hee hee.

So yeah. Buy this book. And if you own any Sandra Boynton books, tell me what they are and if you like them! We would LOVE to add some more of her stuff to our collection of books. :)

We Love Watermelon! {Independence Day Post #1}

As I said before, we had a BUSY weekend. It was packed full of fun with family, friends, good food, fireworks and a screaming toddler on a horse. But that is going to have to wait for another post. :)

This post is about our Independence Day celebration at my in-laws house. We spent the late afternoon and evening playing, laughing, eating, and hosing pounds and pounds of watermelon off Zachariah. (Is that the correct way to spell hosing? All of a sudden that is looking completely wrong.)

Here are a few pictures from our evening!


First the food. Oh the yummy food. Corn, ribs, mac n cheese, baked beans, watermelon, cookies, cinnamon raisin bread. Yeah, you could say we had some good food.

Mmmm. Ribs. I love ribs.

Sorry I didn't get pictures of the rest of the food. I just didn't want to make you all salivate more than necessary.


Here is a little cutie that has appeared on my blog a time or two. Say hello to Collin. Is he not just adorable? Gah. I could eat his cute little cheeks.


And here is my sister in law, Christie. The mommy of the cute baby.


And here is my baby daddy with my baby.
Sorry. I have always wanted to call him my baby daddy. Just had to try it out.


And me and my cute kid. He stayed in the swing for a good bit of the time. He loves to swing. And slide. And run. And fall. And pick up dog poop. But we wont go there.


We might like each other a little bit. But just a little bit. Nothing more. :)


And now for the watermelon.




Oh dear goodness. The amount of watermelon that was consumed by this one toddler would astound you.



And when he ran out of watermelon....


He would lick the rind. And then go eat everyone else's. Then bribe someone into giving him another piece all to himself.

He did this over and over again. And just in case you cant imagine what a toddler looks like after eating 500 slices of watermelon...


I have provided a picture. This was about halfway through. Lets just say we took him straight to Mimi's tub after he ate the last of his watermelon.



I love this kid. Watermelon face and all.

A Boy And His Balloon

As we were walking out of Sam's the other day, the greeter stopped us and handed Zachariah a blue balloon. She had seen us when we first walked in and noticed that Zachariah had an interest in the Good Year blimp balloons that were randomly placed around the store. She then went and found this balloon and saved it for him.

It absolutely made his day.



When random people are kind to my child, it makes me happy. And that is all I wanted to say. :)

Winner and Weekend

Whew! It has been quite a day. Sorry for the delay on the winner of my giveaway. :)

After Zachariah's nap, he swished his hand in a mixing bowl and chose a name.


Then after he did that he promptly dumped all the names out and claimed the bowl as his. He is still playing with it. :)

Anyway. The winner of the Dr. Seuss board book is....


Congrats! I will be sending you an email shortly. :)

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In other news, we had a fantastic weekend. It was busy. Very, very busy. But it was soooo fun. Since I took WAY to many pictures (1,178 to be exact), I am probably going to do a few different posts regarding our Independence Day Weekend. So keep an eye out for those!

I am curious, what did you and your family do for Independence Day?

Happy Independence Day!

Hope everyone has a fun and safe weekend! Make sure you eat lots and lots of watermelon. It is Zachariah's favorite. :)

Book Review #1 and A Giveaway

The Titus family is a Dr. Seuss loving family. My husband has just about every single book that has ever been written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss. (Seriously, he is only missing one.) Daniel actually started reading Dr. Seuss to Zachariah when he was just a wee little tike.

Daniel is very particular about the condition of his Dr. Seuss books. Lo and behold: God created board books! Even of the Dr. Seuss variety. What a fabulous thing!



Out of the Dr. Seuss board books, Zachariah's favorite has always been Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? He L-O-V-E-S that book. The older he got, the more he started mimicking all the noises that Daniel would make as he read the book. It is absolutely adorable.




Here is one of Zachariah's favorite pages. He will actually ask for this book by saying "BOOM BOOM BOOM!". Its pretty cute. :)

Anyway. I love this book. We all do. It is a fun read! And since its a board book, the pages don't get ripped out--very toddler friendly. You can also get the regular one for older kids (like Daniel). Either way, it's a fabulous buy.

But wait!

In honor of my first book review post and because I am just plain awesome, I am giving away one (1) Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? board book!

What? You don't have a toddler? No worries. You can enter and try to win it for a relative, friend or avid collector.

All you have to do is leave a comment telling me your favorite Dr. Seuss book. Any one will do as long as it is your favorite... and written by Dr. Seuss of course! (Make sure I have some way to contact you. A blog address, email, social security number... something like that)

You have until 9:00 pm Sunday. (I do have a bedtime, people.) Then Zachariah will randomly select a winner and I will post the winner sometime Monday. So go ahead and enter. What do you have to lose, besides your streak of not commenting on my blog? :)

Ready?
Set.
Go!

Something New

First off, I wanted to wish all three of my readers a Happy Wednesday!

Now that we got that out of the way...

I don't know about you, but I hate buying books for my little man only to find out that they don't really interest him that much. Despite all of the not-so-great books we have come across, we have also found some fabulous books that both Zachariah and I love. Rather than doing one big post on all of those books, I thought I would do a book review post once a week. On Thursdays. At 9:00 am.

Ok, so it may not be exactly at nine... but you get the idea.

Seeing as how today is Wednesday (hence the Wednesday greeting), tomorrow will be my very first book review post. And I just might have a little surprise for those of you who tune in! :)

See ya tomorrow!

Seriously Folks...

You don't get much cuter than this.

Ice Ice Baby

You can thank me for that later.


Yesterday afternoon ended with a bang. Well, not really. It was more like a thud. Regardless of what it sounded like, there was an injury. Lets just say that it involved a hyper toddler, an innocent chair, a jump to get on the chair, and a slight miscalculation in the landing.


Ouch. That smarts. Luckily no tears were shed, just a few whimpers. He did make sure to point me in the direction of the freezer after the incident. You know, in case I forgot where we keep the ice.



Since Zachariah is not usually the type to lay still, we used Elmo as a nice distraction while we iced the wound.

If only that had worked for his hair cut this weekend. Then we wouldn't have ended up with uneven hair. But we wont talk about that. Ahem.



Until the next injury...

Painting Project #1

Last week Z and I embarked on a new journey. One that required some of these...


That's right. We did a little painting project. We picked up a wooden door knocker from Michaels ( a whopping $1.00), a bag of children's paint brushes at Wal Mart ($4.00), then borrowed some of Daddy's paint and we were set!

(I want to go ahead and apologize for not taking very many pictures during this process. I needed to focus my full attention on making sure Zachariah didn't paint my walls.)



We started out with a plain wooden door knocker. (pretend there is a picture above)



Then I painted a base coat of blue while Z was playing. (again, pretend there is a picture above. I told you I didn't do a good job with the picture taking!)



We ran some errands while the paint was drying. Then Z sat down with a paint brush and a bowl of green paint and went to town. Quite artistic... don't you think? :)



After the paint dried (again) and we applied the wooden stickers that came with it, we had a finished door knocker!


And in case there was any doubt, Zachariah loved making it. Every time he walks by the door knob that it hangs from, he makes sure to "count" and point to all three of the bugs. Its super cute.

I am hoping to do a painting project once a week. We started out small with our first one just to play it safe. But I think its fair to say that Z thoroughly enjoyed it, and I cant wait until the next one! I will keep you posted on what we choose for our next project! :)

Date Night...

So rare, but so refreshing.



P.S. Transformers is ah-mazing.

My Crazy Kid

Last summer I posted a video and some pictures of Zachariah in his very first pool. That pool is adorable and all, but we needed something a little bigger this year. You know, something that could hold Mommy AND Zachariah. :)

After searching high and low, we found a winner! Zachariah LOVES being in this pool. He asks to go out and play in the "wa-wa" every morning and every afternoon. With the help of a few pool toys, bath toys, and random cups from the kitchen, a fun time is had by all.


When we are over at a friend's house, or visiting a new place, one might think my son is pretty calm. Some might even use the term reserved. When people tell me this I go ahead and laugh a little bit to myself.




Looking at these pictures he almost has ME fooled! I mean, seriously. He really does look so peaceful... so content to play with a sifter from his bucket-o-sand toys.




But then I see this look. Still sweet, but a little on the mischievous side. I try to anticipate his next move, but he has given me NOTHING. No clue whatsoever of what he might do. Is he going to throw the sifter at me? Try to heave himself over the edge of the pool (a new found talent of his)? Maybe he will just tell me a funny joke. That would be a nice change of pace.




Then all of a sudden, with virtually no warning at all, this happens...




The splash fest of '09 is what I like to call it.




Ah. That's more like it. Calm and reserved. This is how I roll. Now I can get in the pool and catch some rays.

Except I can't. Because now it is time for jump fest '09...




Oh dear goodness. Here comes some more.





It may look like he is in the middle of a meltdown here, but he just gets into the whole jumping thing.




Mom, do you want to play with my ducky?




Too bad. I will ninja kick you instead! Hi-yah!




Oh yeah. remember his new found talent for climbing over the side of the pool? Yeah. he wanted to make sure to show off for you guys.


Hope everyone has a fabulous weekend!
Love,
Amy Lynn, Daniel, and Muscle Man.