Gymnastic James

James will be joining Cirque de Soleil next year.

Two years with James!

James is two years old! We had party #1 last Saturday at our house, and party #2 will be next Sunday in Augusta. Here are two of his presents: the tricycle that lights up and makes all kinds of sounds, and the Georgia Bulldogs shirt.

This is one of the presents that James actually opened himself. He needed a good bit of help opening most of them, not because he couldn't do it, but because he was too easily distracted by all the other stuff going on. Whatever this present was, it clearly impressed both Uncle Dan and Great-Grandma Wallace.
Mommy, Grandma, and Kristin made these Veggietales cakes (Bob the tomato and Larry the cucumber) as well as some cupcakes. They were very good, although James is not much of a dessert person. The rest of us enjoyed the cakes, and everyone including James enjoyed the hot dogs and hamburgers that Papa grilled.

Constantly learning

James is a big fan of animals of all kinds, and we play with his little Fisher-Price animal set for several hours every day. Here we see one of his favorite activities: Mommy or Daddy will name an animal, and James will go find it. James is very good at this now; he can tell the difference between the quail and the nightingale better than Daddy can.

Sorry that the sound is so bad on this one; don't know what the problem is.

James has also figured out that his toys are representations of actual animals. He has a young person's encyclopedia with lots of pictures of real animals, and he likes to pick out a toy animal and then find the picture of the same real animal in the book. He's a little annoyed that his encyclopedia doesn't have a picture of a vulture, though. We had to get the 'V' volume of the grown-up encyclopedia and let him see the vulture's picture in there. Along the same lines, he now knows that the little plastic giraffe seen above is the same animal as his big stuffed giraffe, and they are both the same as the giraffe in his puzzle. When he sees the giraffe picture in his encyclopedia, he brings Mommy or Daddy all the various giraffe-related toys. Same for the penguin, the iguana, and the cat (although he usually tries to grab the real-live cat, which doesn't always go too well).

This understanding of symbolism extends to things other than animals, too. He was wearing a shirt with an airplane on it the other day when he saw an airplane in the sky. He pointed to the airplane, then to the picture on his shirt, and said, "plane, plane." Well, it was more like "pay, pay," but we knew what he meant. Also, whenever he sees the University of Georgia-style letter "G", he says "Grandpa!" because Grandpa has a big UGA sign for his car. So apparently he thinks that the "G" stands for Grandpa, and Grandpa has lots of fans. He'll probably think the whole state loves Grandpa once football season starts.

Speaking of football, with no Little Gym classes this summer, James has developed his own training regimen. Here we see him working on his linebacker drills. We prefer it when he uses cushiony furniture for tackling dummies, but he occasionally employs other things like toys, walls, and Daddy.

Who is responsible for this?

I don't know where this came from, but for some reason when James sees a picture of Superman, he says something that sounds a lot like "it's George Bush." Here's an example:

We're not sure if he's talking about 41 or 43, or perhaps the 19th-century Biblical scholar by the same name. Nonetheless, in an effort to remain nonpartisan, we are trying to teach him to say "Dick Cheney" when he sees a picture of Lex Luthor.

Beach Week

Well, two thirds of the Wallace family is recently returned from the eleventh annual Lundberg Family Beach Week Extravaganza, which was, as always, a blast. James and I were the two thirds able to enjoy it. Patrick had to stay here to do his new job at Camp Twin Lakes. So like him to be all altruistic while I'm off "relaxing" (anyone who has been responsible for a toddler in a non-babyproofed house full of people who insist on leaving expensive electronics on the floor knows that the experience is anything but), but that's why I love him. Although we missed him, James, it turns out, loves the beach.

We drove up there with my mom and my cousin Erik, and it took less than three lifetimes, which was an improvement over last year. We were still the last to arrive, so when we got there, my grandfather, father, two uncles, one aunt, two sisters, and one other cousin were already there. Erin's boyfriend Min met us there later in the week, so I suppose we weren't technically the last to arrive. The house we stayed in was great. Its very best feature was that the beachfront porch had a gate that James didn't know how to work, which meant that when we were out there, I could sit down for approximately three seconds. Of course, we didn't spend very much time in the house anyway. James LOVED the ocean, and he wanted to be running around in it the entire time we were there. He ran through the waves, swam (with some assistance) on calmer days, and had a bevy of family members help him jump over the waves. He loved when people would bring their dogs to the beach and he could pet them, and he very much enjoyed stomping down sand castles that the rest of us made. On top of that, he learned all kinds of new things, one of which was blowing bubbles.

The week went by quickly, and James slept very little, but had the Best Time Ever.

When we got back, James eagerly received the gift of a fire truck that Patrick had gotten him, and he learned how to do something vaguely resembling a siren sound.

Another outcome of our trip to the beach was a hunger strike on the part of my twenty-one-month old son. You see, James has never really been a great eater. We have been horrible parents and resorted to letting him watch television while he eats because the dulcet tones of the Veggie Tales and Phineas and Ferb lull him into enough of a stupor that we can shove some food in him without having to hold him down screaming. The plan was that while we were at the beach, we would get him off the television while eating thing. There would be lots of people there, and they would provide enough of a distraction that James would eat there more easily than here, and then, by the time he returned, he would be a champion eater and would scarf anything we put on his plate.

Sadly, that was not to be, and I blame my mother for that. She was helping out the afternoon after we arrived by feeding him lunch. He was, as usual, being difficult and refusing his food, and my mother, whose intentions are always noble, knew that I would be upset if he didn't eat well. In an effort to keep everyone happy, my mother let him play with her iphone while he ate. Her iphone has games like Old MacDonald and The Wheels on the Bus and Itsy Bitsy Spider and Fish School, all of which James loves. He was enthralled, and he ate fantastically. All week. With the aid of the iphone. He also learned to take pictures with the phone (cousin Jason taught him that one) and took about forty pictures of his feet, and a good number of the tray on his high chair. Everything went beautifully. Until we got home, that is. Tragically, neither Patrick nor I have an iphone. We do not have The Wheels on the Bus or Itsy Bitsy Spider or a camera that is operated with a touch screen. What we did have was a child who screamed for as long as we made him sit in his chair to eat. We tried everything. Below you will see a video of one of the things we tried. It worked that night and hasn't worked since, but it sure was entertaining at the time.

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Well, that's all from the land of Wallace for today. It's late, and I'm tired. I'll try to post again soon. James is more and more fun every day, and Patrick is good at catching his cuteness on video. It seems unfair to keep something so adorable all to ourselves, and I'll make an effort to be better about sharing him with the world. :)

The Summer of Waaah!

Unfortunately there are no pictures or videos to post today. We'll try to work on that.

James has been a bit grumpy lately, which might be blamed on one of three things, or a combination thereof:

1) Lots of new teeth coming in at once,

2) The frustration of knowing that he can climb on the kitchen table, counter, desk, etc., but is constantly prevented from doing so by mean mean Daddy, or

3) He thinks crying will actually get him what he wants (he is very very wrong).

According to everyone we know who has kids, the grumpiness is normal - the proverbial "terrible twos" are just a little early. We are trying to help him avoid frustrations as much as possible, but the unfortunate fact is that there are things he is not allowed to do. Things that will hurt him, things that do not belong to him, and activities that violate state and federal law are all no-nos. Hopefully he will learn that soon; right now, he just thinks Mommy and Daddy are mean.

He does have a lot of fun at the pool, however, so we go down there several times a week. He's very comfortable in the water now, which means he'll probably love the beach next week.

Last weekend Mommy's co-worker Anne brought her daughter Jenna, who is about a year older than James. They had tremendous fun playing at the pool, the playground, and in James's room. James isn't quite as fast as Jenna, but he enjoyed trying to keep up with her.

We had our first babysitter (other than Grandma) this week. Mommy had school stuff, and Daddy had some projects at Grandma and Grandpa's house, so Mommy's co-worker Laura stayed with James. James thought Laura was great; he's pretty sick of Daddy by now. Mommy and Daddy were a little worried about leaving him, but he didn't mind at all. We probably won't need a sitter very often, but it's nice to know James is okay with the idea.

James is becoming a food connoisseur, too (or he's just really picky)

Yesterday was Daddy's birthday, so we all went to Provino's, a fancy Italian restaurant where birthday boys and girls get a free dinner. We were kind of worried about how James would behave in the restaurant, but he was quite well-behaved. And he ate a huge pile of fettucini alfredo, too. He wanted to play with the glass of water for a while, but once he tried the pasta he just kept eating. We let him use a grown-up fork (mainly because we didn't bring one of his small forks), which made it even more fun for him. He had the rest of the fettucini for lunch today, and was just as enthusiastic about it. That is very encouraging, considering the trouble we have had lately getting him to eat. We just hope that he'll like eating something other than expensive Italian restaurant food.

Today was the last Little Gym class until the fall for James. They had a nice little "awards ceremony" where all the kids got a medal, and then we just played around the rest of the time. Here we can see him on the big donut (although it's backlit pretty bad at the beginning; sorry about that). James has a lot of fun at the Little Gym, and he has learned some impressive stuff there, so we'll have to come up with lots of fun activities over the summer to fill the void.