The Zorio Family: May 2011

Thursday, May 26, 2011

And Everything Else!

I am getting caught up with all of the blogging I have been meaning to do. We have been having some issues with our Internet recently, so I have fallen behind. With this being the 3rd blog I have posted today, don't forget to scroll all the way down if you haven't read about Dawson's 2 Year Update or Dawson's Tennessee Birthday Celebration. Since I've already posted about so much today, this is just everything else we've been up to recently that didn't fit into any particular category.

I've been enjoying tending to my little garden in the backyard, and Dawson loves to help me.

Check out our squash plants!

The yellow squash will be ready to eat soon!

The zucchini are coming along nicely also.

They are just a little behind the yellow squash, so

it will be a little longer before they are ready to eat!

I wasn't sure how the carrots would grow,

but they seem to be doing well. We will

see when it's time to dig them up!

The Green Bell Pepper plants all have flowers on

them, and hopefully soon they will have peppers!

I have finally taken pictures of our tiling

project from last month. I was so impressed

with John's handy work. This is the tile in

the master bathroom.

And the tile in the hallway bathroom.

Both were linoleum before.

Dawson has acquired a lot of pieces that go with

his train table. The track, signs, trees, and trains

were starting to drive me crazy because they were

always piled up on top of the table. I took a cardboard

diaper box and covered it with blue canvas. Then I sewed

a liner for it with Thomas fabric.

I am so pleased with how it turned out.

It fits nicely under the train table.

And best of all, it holds ALL of the train table

accessories we have right now. In the future,

if we get more pieces and need more space, I

can make another one, two, or three that will all slide

under the table beside this one.

At the beginning of the May, I hosted a baby shower

for a friend, Karen, from church. My friends, Kelly

and Melanie, (also from church) were the other hostesses.

The baby's bedding has some gerber daisy-looking flowers

on it, so we decided to make gerber daisy flowers the theme

of the shower. We had the shower at Kelly's house. Here's the

food table!

Kelly made this cute cupcake stand

and adorable and yummy cupcakes.

The mantle shower decor and gifts!

Some of the people at the shower!

Left to Right: Karen (guest of honor), and hostesses:

Melanie, me, and Kelly.

The afternoon of the shower we attended

a birthday party at Chuckie Cheese.

Dawson's friend Caleb turned three!

Dawson's favorite part of Chuckie Cheese

were the characters/puppet (I'm not sure what

they're called) that played and danced on stage.

He watched them and danced there the whole time.

He would have climbed up on them if he could have!

Daddy and Dawson drumming along on the

stage with the music!

Dawson and Daddy at Chuckie Cheese.

I love this picture. SO happy together!

Dawson trying to share some of his tickets with

Jasper!

On Mother's Day Dawson fell asleep

on the way home from church.

He rarely ever falls asleep in the car

anymore, so I had to snap a picture!

On Mother's Day Dawson and John picked

some daisies for me from behind our house.

So sweet! Ever since they did this, when

Dawson sees a flower he picks it and brings

it to me! He loves to talk about picking flowers

for Mommy! I love it!

A couple of weeks ago, Dawson's friends

Jonah and Norah had us over for an outdoor

playdate! Dawson was so happy to see

Jonah and Norah! Here are Dawson and Jonah

catching up! :)

Dawson and his friends at the playdate.

Having fun with friends.

Dawson's Birthday Celebration in Tennessee

On Friday we traveled to Tennessee to celebrate Dawson's 2nd birthday with family. While we were there we also celebrated his Lolly's birthday and his Cousin Drew's 13th birthday! With all the May birthdays in our family, it's no wonder that all Dawson can talk about recently are birthdays, cakes, and candles!

On Saturday afternoon Dawson's Nana and Grandad (John's parents) threw a gnome-themed birthday party! Dawson, of course, loved the gnomes. He is still obsessed! He's probably the only 2 year old in history to have a gnome birthday, but it was so perfect for him! :) The weather was perfect for the party to be in the backyard. Dawson's Nana, Grandad, Lolly, Pop, Auntie Emmie, Cousin Drew, Uncle Logan, Great Uncle John, Great Aunt Beverly, 2nd cousin Russ, and, of course, his Mommy and Daddy were all there to celebrate. In addition to the gnome cake, we also had a cake for Lolly, one for Drew, and one for Dawson's Great Uncle John to cover all the recent May birthdays! We sang happy birthday several times, and Dawson LOVED it. Randomly Dawson just starts singing happy birthday now that we're home and not celebrating anymore.

On Sunday afternoon we visited Dawson's Great Mamaw where we had a little more birthday cake and celebrated Dawson birthday with Dawson's Lolly, Pop, Uncle Logan, Great Uncle James, Great Aunt Connie, and Great Mamaw. Dawson loved being the center of attention for yet another day!

Also, while we were in Tennessee Dawson got to ride Pop's John Deere. It was hard for Dawson to do anything other than talk about riding the mower while we were there, and he's still talking about Pop's mower now that we're home. Pop also took Dawson on a long walk around the neighborhood where he saw some geese in a pond. Now Dawson will randomly remember this and say, "Come back, come back here a geese!" I think it's funny every time he talks about it he says "a geese."

My parents saved the spring horse I got for my 2nd birthday, and while we were visiting they got it out of the attic for Dawson. He loved riding it, but of course he had to ride the horse as wild as possible. We didn't bring the horse back this time, but we plan to bring it back to our playroom next time we're in Tennessee. I love letting Dawson play with things I had when I was little.

Here are some picture from our trip to Tennessee...

Dawson enjoying his gnome cake!

The gnome cake Dawson's Nana and Auntie Emmie

made for his 2nd birthday party in Tennessee.

Taking a cake and juice break!

Dawson's Cousin Drew with his cake!

Dawson playing with his 2nd cousin,

Russ, at the birthday party.

Dawson playing.

Dawson playing with the sand with

Daddy and Russ.

Dawson loved having so many people

to play with him!

Dawson loved the scooper that belonged

to Grandad and Nana's neighbor's children.

He scooped and dumped the sand and would say

it was "mokey" (smokey).

Dawson got to play on the trampoline with Daddy

and Cousin Drew.

He bounced all around.

Dawson and Daddy riding on Pop's John Deere.

Dawson and his Great Mamaw celebrating

his 2nd birthday.

2 Year Update

24 months is such an awesome age! Dawson can communicate SO much to us, which I think is the main reason we are loving this age! Dawson had his 2 year check-up last week. He is 35 inches tall (1 inch shy of 3 feet!), and he weighs 29.5 pounds. He is still tall for his age, in the 90th percentile. Dawson's appointment went really well and was relatively uneventful. Normally I have a long list of questions for the doctor, but this time I only had one...I think the doctor was surprised! After checking his stats, examining Dawson, and talking to John and I, Dawson only had to get one shot before we were free to go. He, of course, cried when he got the shot (and John and I had to hold him down, which I always absolutely hate). He did, however, get over it pretty quickly. His doctor was impressed that two times while we were there Dawson announced he had to go potty and he actually went!

Dawson has been very interested in using the potty, and so I started working with him on potty training. He is doing AWESOME! When we're home he wears cloth training pants, and he has a few accidents. He hates it when he has an accident though because the training pants (unlike pull-ups training pants) don't really absorb much. I think that is helping him to want to go to the bathroom because when he does have an accident he says, "Ewie!" and "Gross!" the whole time he's wet. He continues to amaze us at how well he is doing though. Yesterday, he only had 3 accidents all day...that even involved staying dry during nap time! Last week when we drove to Tennessee, he stayed dry the whole 4 hour car ride. I have been very impressed! His doctor did warn us, though, that sometime when boys start potty training right at 2 they can do great and then fall off the wagon. She just told us not to worry if that happened. I have just been thrilled that he is doing so well, so we will see what happens down the road.

At 24 months, Dawson is a chatter box! He can say way more words than I could ever list. He puts together 4-word sentences on a regular basis, and he has even had a few longer sentences! His favorite thing to talk about right now is still his birthday and, of course, the CAKE! :)

Dawson is so active; some days it seems like he does not stop running, jumping, and climbing. We spend most of the daylight hours outside getting out all of that energy. From the moment he wakes up he wants to be "out," and a lot of days that's the first word that comes out of his mouth! Outside, his newest obsession is the sandbox. For his birthday his Lolly and Pop got him a sandbox which Dawson absolutely loves! (The only downside is that we constantly have sand in the house! Just feels like we're at the beach all the time!) He also loves to look at the garden and talk about the veggies, dirt, and strawberries.

Dawson's favorite book is still Hello, Smokey. On every page Dawson says, "Hello, MOKEY!" or "Go Vols!" We actually had to take the book with him to the doctor's office because he didn't want to leave home without it. His doctor went to Vandy, so she accused us of brainwashing him early...we assured her that it was his favorite book! :) Then Dawson started telling her all about "Mokey" (Smokey). I love it! On one page in the book, we sing Rocky Top, and now Dawson even knows when to put his arms up to do the "woo" part! :) A future Volunteer in the making, I'm sure!

Another obsession at the age of 24 months, is our mower. Actually, anyone's mower. Some days it's all we can talk about. He will ask to get the key to the shed to get the mower out. He has a toy mower which he loves, but he will do anything to get a peek at a real mower. If there's a mower going in our neighborhood, Dawson can hear it and we have to find it! He also loves to talk about "weed-eats" (weed eaters) and "bowwers" (leaf blowers). He's all boy!

One new thing we have discovered that Dawson enjoys is playing on inflatables. After we saw how much he enjoyed the one at his birthday party, we have taken him to a couple of places with indoor inflatables. This morning we went to a new business called The Play Place that was awesome. It had several large inflatables, bean bags in front of a projector tv screen, a lego table, and best of all several of Dawson's friends. We met a lot of Dawson's friends to play, and they all had a blast running, climbing, and bouncing for about 2.5 hours! It was the perfect day for it too, since it was rainy all morning.

Although I can't believe how big my little, baby Dawson has gotten to be, he continues to be more and more fun the older he gets! Enjoy the pictures below...

Dawson and Bentley both love the

new sandbox!

Before I could even finish paying

admission for Dawson to The Play

Place, he had taken off to play!

A lot of the pictures I got were super

blurry because the kids were moving

and bouncing so much! Dawson had a

blast!

Trying to do the buckle on an

inflatable. He loves to try to

do his own buckle in the car

these days, and he got excited to see

a buckle on the inflatable.

My big 2 year old!

Dawson had fun pretending to swim in the balls.

Dawson and Sawyer in the ball inflatable.

So happy!

Dawson and his friends taking a break for a snack.

(Please don't judge his camo shorts! :) We had an

accident, and that was his emergency pair of shorts

I had with me! haha)

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Dawson's DINO-mite 2nd Birthday!

As unbelievable as it is, our baby is TWO! Dawson's second birthday was May 14th, which happened to fall on a Saturday. It was perfect to be able to have the party on his actual birthday!

A few weeks ago when we were in Tennessee we celebrated Dawson's Pop's birthday, and Dawson has not stopped talking about Pop's birthday since. He knows that birthdays, cake, candles, and singing go together, and he likes to put all kinds of sentences together about those combination of things and Pop. We had explained to him that other people than just Pop have birthdays too and that one day soon it would be Dawson's birthday. On Wednesday when we went to the library we checked out books about birthdays and have been reading them since. Dawson completely understood that it was his birthday, he was having friends come play, we would sing, he would blow out the candle, and eat cake. The eat cake is his favorite part to talk about. (And we're still talking about it now!)

On Saturday morning Dawson woke up bright and early-he must have known it was his special day and wanted to get an early start. I dressed him in his first birthday shirt of the day. It was light blue and said "Birthday Boy" with a cake and candles. Just like last year on his 1st birthday, we took him to McDonalds to get pancakes for breakfast. McDonalds is a real treat to Dawson, and he still loves pancakes so it worked out to do the same breakfast as last year.

After we returned home, we let him open his presents from us. His birthday theme this year was "ninos" (dinos) since they are his favorite thing right now and have been for at least 5 months. We found cute dino-themed wrapping paper for his gifts, and he was excited to point out the dinos on the paper. He was so cute opening his gifts because he got so excited to play with each thing! We spent the rest of the morning playing outside with his big gift which was a "digger." He loves his digger and talks about it often. He usually calls it his "gigger" or "grigger."

While Dawson took his nap, John and I set up the backyard for his birthday party. Several weeks ago, I sent out dino invitations that read:

Dawson-o-saurus is turning two,

And he wants to celebrate with you!

The party is on the 14th of May,

We hope to see you on this DINO-mite day!

For a T-REXcellent time, come over at 4

We will have food for every hungry carnivore!

No gifts please is our request,

Just come have fun at our dino nest!

Don't be extinct!

RSVP to the Prehistoric Parents

Our phone number

Dawson's Dino Nest

Our address

On the envelope we placed stamps that were a photo of Dawson riding a brontosaurus. I loved doing the photo stamps this year instead of the regular ones from the post office! I was thrilled with how they turned out!

The weather the day of Dawson's party could not have been more different from last year. His first birthday party was extremely hot it was in the 90's with no breeze, this year it was in the 60's and 70's with a breeze. Although it looked rainy all morning, we were thrilled that it did not rain, and we were able to have his party outside on his birthday as planned!! The colors for the party were green, orange, and yellow, so we tied balloons in those colors to the mailbox and in various locations around the backyard and the fence. We had one dino tablecloth and two green tablecloths. The food was dino-themed too. We had brontosaurus burgers, dino dogs (hot dogs), fossil fries (chips) pteranodon food (goldfish crackers), dino eggs (grapes), and t-rexcellent thirst quinchers with the ice served out of a paleontologist bucket.

I made Dawson's cake again this year. It was a dino-shaped cake that was green with a little orange and yellow. I star-tipped it and then wrote "Happy 2nd birthday Dawson!" around the sides of the dino. In addition to the cake, I made cupcakes which were frosted with green, orange, and yellow and arranged on a tray with dinos peeking out around them.

We set up two canopies in the backyard which gave it more of a party-feel. We filled up a kiddie swimming pool with sand, and I buried about 75 dinos and dino eggs in the sand for the little paleontologists to dig. I made a sign that said "Dino Dig" to place near the area.

We also had a local inflatables company come set up a moon bounce in our backyard. I also made a sign for this which read, "Brontosaurus Bounce" to tie it into the theme. Dawson wore his 2nd birthday shirt of the day, this one was one I made. It had a dino on it that had on a bow tie (matching the one on his invitations), and it said "Dawson is 2."

After Dawson woke up from his nap, we were set up for the party and all of his friends began arriving. This year the following friends attended Dawson's DINO-mite birthday: Matthew (23 months), Caroline (4), Jordan (2), Jayden (2), Connor (2), Jude (2), Jasper (9 months), Autumn (10 months), Sawyer (3), Liam (3 months), Caleb (3), Illya (5), Carolina (4), and their parents Stephanie, Tim, Rachel, Ryan, Brad, Karen, Hunter, Blakeley, Michael, Jenn, Nathan, Melissa. We had quiet the crowd in our backyard which was wonderful! I am so glad so many of Dawson's friends/our friends could make it to help us celebrate.

Dawson absolutely loved the moon bounce and the dino dig area. He basically ran back and forth between the two. I'm not sure who had more fun in the brontosaurus bounce, the kids or the Dads. There was one point in the party where I think almost every dad and child (except the babies) was in the bounce! How fun! Dawson and all of the other kids loved bouncing together...especially when the dads joined!

After playing for a little while, John fired up the grill and cooked a yummy dinner for everyone. Then we sang happy birthday, and Dawson blew his candle out on his own this year! (When did he get so big?!?) He was so excited to finally get to eat cake! After taking a short break to eat, the kids headed back to the bounce and the sand to play more.

After partying almost three hours, it was time for everyone to go home...and all of the kids were exhausted from the brontosaurus bounce! As party favors we had sand buckets which were labeled with each kids name as if they were a paleontologist. For example, Dawson's read: "Paleontologist Dawson." In each bucket there were dino shaped crayons, water guns, pin wheels, and cookies I made which said things like, "thanks for coming," "dino-mite!" "roar," and "2." When I was pregnant with Dawson I must have known he would love dinos, because I purchased 4 dino cookie cutters when John and I were vacationing in Miami that year. He loves them so much, I've used them several times, but they were perfect for this party!! For the three babies who attended the party, we had Rock-A-Stacks which were labeled "For the Future Paleontologist."

After the party John, Dawson, and I took advantage of the brontosaurus bounce still being in our backyard. After jumping for a little while longer we headed inside, and Dawson crashed for the night after having a wonderful second birthday. He is still talking about his birthday, and sometimes I will catch him singing, "birthday....happy.....birthday...CAKE!"

I cannot believe our sweet baby boy is two, but if he has to turn two there was no better way to celebrate than with a DINO-themed birthday party!

I hope you enjoy the pictures below. Check our blog again soon, because tomorrow is Dawson's 2 year check-up, after which I plan to do his whole "24 Month Update."